Tag: inspiration

Going With the Flow

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“If you correct your mind, the rest of your life will fall into place.” – Lao Tzu

I’ve noticed something interesting with Mr. D. If presented with a household choice like what to watch for our tv show time before bed, he will insist in a vociferous way that might be spectacularly specific to being 3 ½-year-old and all the certainty that goes with it, that it needs to be the option HE wants. But if the tv is already on and tuned to something that is appealing to the younger set, he will more often than not, just meld into watching it.

As I witness this, I recognize this same trait in myself. When I’m presented with a choice, I find it necessary to make it MY choice and am involved with it in a very discerning and egoic way that is likely to result in anger or disappointment if I don’t get it the way I want. But if something just happens, I can adapt to whatever it is without my thought or much bother.

Case in point – I was going out to dinner this past weekend with a group of people I’d rounded up after I remembered that it’s okay for me to sometimes get a babysitter and have grown-up time. When it came to picking the restaurant, one of my friends suggested one and I looked at the menu and thought, “Oh, this doesn’t sound like what I want to eat for MY night out.” I suggested something else that was nearby and that was fine with everyone.

But had I gone to a friends’ house and they served me the food that was on the menu I objected to, I likely would have eaten it, or not, without much thought. I would have been grateful for the warmth, company, and work that they put into it.

Which makes me wonder how I can cultivate that flexibility so I’m more in the flow of life. Because when it comes down to it, I do better when I admit that steering the big picture of life is beyond my pay grade. Then I can save my energy for just “being” with life and not trying to bend it to my will. Sometimes what is served up by the Universe is the usual banality and routine. But sometimes I’m surprised by joy and delight in things like the other day when in the middle of a busy day, I answered the phone, and it was a friend who I hadn’t spoken to in five or six years just calling to say “hi.”

And that’s what I try to do for Mr. D as well. Sometimes he has the unfortunate experience of having to go along with the boring chores of family life. But when he’s flexible and going with the flow, I try to surprise him now and again with an activity like a bouncy house that is beyond what he would have thought to have ask for – just to plant the seed that when we let go of control, sometimes the result is being open to what is beyond our limited expectations.

I’m not sure if the reminder is for my son or myself, but hopefully it works for both.

(featured photo from Pexels)

Back In The Game

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“The difference between winning and losing is most often not quitting.” – Walt Disney

My 83-year-old mom has returned to playing ping pong after her infamous ping pong dive where she admitted her competitive nature got the best of her common sense. When my family came over for dinner the other night, my brother asked if she was making any concessions in her game to be safer. She nodded yes and said she’s trying to keep a hand on the table while she plays for stability.

Apparently the physical therapist who’s been working with her on a sciatic issue asked the same thing. Not really convinced by her reply, he asked, “Have you ever considered just saying, ‘Good shot?’”

We all got a good laugh out of that one. It reminded me that I’ve read and seen a lot of great advice about staying in the game, whatever our game may be, lately.

From An Audience of One, the wisdom that we need to choose the path we are going to travel and stick with it. Not that other forks won’t arise in the future but that nothing good comes from wavering at the decision point too long or mourning the path not chosen.

And from WritingfromtheheartwithBrian a pep talk straight out of the Buffalo Bills locker room to be fully present. Brian rousingly writes an hearty exploration of the Bills saying, “Where else would you rather be, than right here, right now?” that reminded me to love the life I have and the path I’m on.

Finally I watched Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade again recently. In it, Indiana Jones is reading the clues from his father’s grail diary to pass the final challenge to find the grail and save his father’s life. He has to believe as he steps forward into the chasm that a path across the void will unfold. He checks his options one last time, confirms he’s in the right location, and then as he leaps, the path appears.

Decide on the path, commit to being present for it and then have faith to take the leap – it’s about as good as it gets for finding our way through this life.

I’m glad my mom has a strategy to keep safe by keeping a hand on the ping pong table. But equally as relieved she’s still in the game. It just wouldn’t be her if she just watched shots go by!

(featured photo from Pexels)

In Awe

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“Our life experiences will have resonances within our innermost being, so that we will feel the rapture of being alive.” – Joseph Campbell

I frequently divert and delay my family’s morning routine to take a look at the sunrise. This time of year, while it is often grey, there are also so many sunrises that we can witness together since the sun and my kids are getting up at about the same time, even if it means we are going to have to rush a bit to get to school. If you follow me on Instagram, you probably are tired of my sunrise pictures.

But I still persist because I’m not tired of sunrises and my kids are still willing to humor me. A book that just came out on January 3rd of this year is helping me to understand why it matters to me to witness this every day. Awe: The new Science of Everyday Wonder and How It Can Transform Your Life by UC Berkley psychology professor Dacher Keltner talks about the effect of awe in our lives:

“How does awe transform us? By quieting the nagging, self-critical, overbearing, status-conscious voice of our self, or ego, and empowering us to collaborate, to open our minds to wonders, and to see the deep patterns in life.”

Dacher Keltner, Awe: The New Science of Everyday Wonder and How It Can Transform Your Life

Whoa – I want more of that. In fact, if I had to give a reason why I meditate, write, and now podcast – I’d be hard pressed to describe it more perfectly than the quote above.

(I did just throw podcast in to the list above – because I’m launching the Sharing The Heart of the Matter podcast with Vicki Atkinson today. It’s a podcast where we want to focus on people sharing their heart stories – please listen and also if you have one to tell, let me know so we can record it.)

The definition of awe that Dacher Keltner gives is:

“Awe is the feeling of being in the presence of something vast that transcends your current understanding of the world.”

Dacher Keltner, Awe: The New Science of Everyday Wonder and How It Can Transform Your Life

When he collected personal narratives from people in twenty-six different countries in the world, he and his team distilled down “eight wonders of life, which include the strength, courage, and kindness of others; collective movement in actions like dance and sports; nature; music; art and visual design; mystical encounters; encountering life and death; and big ideas or epiphanies.”

I think of the awe I felt when I was pregnant with Miss O and was writing my book about my dad. He’d died suddenly in a bike accident just the day after I’d finalized my IVF plan to get pregnant. As I took the recordings that I’d made with him, and wrote the book about him that I told him I wanted to write (but thought it would be with him in attendance), I felt the swirl of birth and death every day. I danced in the love of my dad and the life that was within me for all of those nine months.

Then on the night after I finished every last line edit, I went into labor and gave birth to my daughter. In many ways, I gave birth to two things – the book Finding My Father’s Faith and the beautiful Miss O. All of this happened in a way that was far bigger than me. There is much that I can’t name or understand about that experience except to say that I wasn’t alone as I wrote. There were definitely three of us there – me, my dad, and my baby. I was in awe for sure. It’s a beautiful feeling – just like witnessing the sunrise every morning.

(featured photo is mine – the moon and the mountain)

The Practice of Kindness

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“As rain falls equally on the just and the unjust, do not burden your heart with judgment but rain your kindness equally on all.” – Buddha

For Christmas, Miss O bought Mr. D a Buzz Lightyear spaceship. It was a big deal for her – she picked it out and paid for it all by herself. Then she hid it away in a spot in the laundry room she thought was safe and guarded his access to that room for three or four weeks. I cut the wrapping paper for her but she wrapped the present herself and placed it in the perfect spot under the tree.

Then on Christmas morning when he opened the present, she was right next to him. She helped him opened the box and then started assembling the few pieces that needed to be attached. She was being really helpful and had so many reasons to be proud but there was a point where the gift really became more important to Miss O than Mr. D.

Watching this all, I thought of all the times that I’ve tried to control how my kindness lands or had that done to me. It perfectly illustrated for me how letting go of control is so essential so I wrote it about this topic for my Heart of the Matter post today: When Kindness Falls Like Rain.

(featured photo from Pexels)

The Daring Practice of Compassion

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“Love and compassion are necessities, not luxuries. Without them, humanity cannot survive.” – Dalai Lama

Yesterday Miss O was with me when I dropped Mr. D at his daycare for the last time in 2022. There was another little person having a hard time with drop-off. She didn’t want to cross the threshold to go in and her dad needed to step away.

As we walked out of the building, we could hear the little girl’s cries. Miss O said, “I hate hearing little ones cry.” We talked all the way to the car about what the little girl could be feeling and why.

When we got home, I pulled out Atlas of the Heart by Brené Brown and looked up compassion. Brené’s working definition of compassion is, “Compassion is the daily practice of recognizing and accepting our shared humanity so that we treat ourselves and others with loving-kindness, and we take action in the face of suffering.”

I read this to Miss O along with some supporting paragraphs about how compassion is scary because of it reminds us that we all have pain and struggle. It isn’t feeling better than or fixing it, it’s being with another in their experience.

Brené includes a passage from The Places That Scare You by Buddhist nun Pema Chödrön:

“When we practice generating compassion, we can expect to experience our fear of pain. Compassion practice is daring. It involves learning to relax and allow ourselves to move gently toward what scares us… In cultivating compassion we draw from the wholeness of our experience – our suffering, our empathy, as well as our cruelty and terror. It has to be this way. Compassion is not a relationship between the healer and the wounded. It’s a relationship between equals.”

The Places That Scare You by Pema Chödrön

It is this feeling of fear that resonated with me. Before I had kids, I got to know the homeless people in my neighborhood that sell the Real Change newspaper, a Seattle newspaper that exists to give low-income and homeless people a job opportunity. Walking around the neighborhood with my dog, I got to know their names and some of their stories. At Christmas I would prepare Christmas cards with $20 in them and walk my dog around until I found them.

Then I had kids and stopped. Now I realized that it wasn’t just because my budget was more squeezed but because it became so much more uncomfortable for me to consider their situation. Somehow the high hopes I have for my little ones never to suffer made me so much more ill-at-ease with the journey of these people who have some pretty hard life stories.

Brené, Pema and Miss O all touch on the difficulty that comes with compassion. It hurts to see people cry and struggle and the action that is often the most helpful is just to be with others as they move through it.

Miss O summarized, “It’s being with them to show them its normal to feel that way.” And now that I know that compassion is supposed to be scary, it helps normalize my reluctance to feel it at times. It helps put me back into the holiday spirit of giving to my homeless friends.

***As a sidenote, my friend and colleague Todd Fulginiti has released a single of a holiday single, Snowfall performed by The Fulginiti Family Band. All proceeds/donations for anyone that wants to download it go to an organization that helps the homeless in Lancaster, PA. For more info see: Todd Fulginiti Music

(featured photo is my dog Biscuit taking the paper from one of our favorite Real Change sellers)

Light, Water & Soil

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“People grow when they are loved well. If you want to help others heal, love them without an agenda.” – Mike McHargue

When I picked Miss O up from school the other day she handed me her mystery science project. It was a little plant in a shot size plastic cup. The experiment was for each table of two kids to divide up – one would leave their plant in the light and the other would put their plant in a dark cupboard for a week. They made predictions about what would happen.

Miss O’s plant was a little radish seedling that had been in the dark cupboard for a week so I was surprised to see that it had three little shoots popping through the meager soil. Miss O’s conclusion about why her plant survived the dark cupboard was that it could survive there but not thrive.

As she handed it to me, Miss O said to be really careful. She was super proud that it had survived. And I promptly bumped my hand and spilled it all over the seat. I scooped the little dirt back in, apologizing and trying to restore calm.

Then I handed it back to Miss O in the back seat and she spilled it. Holy cow – if this plant survived, it was going to be a miracle, not science! But I scooped it up once more and when we got home, put a little fresh dirt in, watered it and put it in the windowsill.

All the while I was thinking about the conditions for growth. I hazard to guess that we’ve all been in the dark cupboard for a week. I think I was in there for a couple of years as I went through my divorce and before I found meditation.

But when we make it through, what do we need to really thrive? For me, it’s meditation, sleep, time in nature, playing with my kids, and conversations with deep and thoughtful friends (online or in real life).

I often poison my soil by eating too much sugar and spending too much time in front of a computer but when I balance it out, I can feel my roots growing deeper.

Amazingly, Miss O’s little plant is doing great in the windowsill. If it keeps growing this way, it’s going to need a different container but I suppose we humans do that too as we navigate the different phases of life.

Getting the Best of My Common Sense

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“Of all forms of caution, caution in love is perhaps the most fatal to true happiness.” – Bertrand Russell

My 83-year-old mom had a ping pong accident this week. One minute she was playing a game at her senior residence and the next she dove for the ball, fell on a cot-like thing, hit the rail with her back and was injured enough that the firemen, paramedics and ambulance came and she was on her way to the hospital.

She’s out of the hospital now and doing fine. With a couple of cracked ribs and a little bit of bleeding, the injury is painful but nowhere near as serious as it could have been. She’s chalked the whole thing up to “her competitive nature getting the best of her common sense.”

I’m fascinated by that phrase because I can think of any number of things that have gotten the best of my common sense. Usually pride and stubbornness because I’m not particularly competitive. All the times I’ve carried too much (I’m thinking of my post about efficiency), haven’t asked for help, and stayed at something far too long.

And it seems to be passed down in families. The other day Miss O wasn’t feeling well and I asked her if she wanted to cancel anything or take a rest and her answer could have come right from my mouth. “NO! I’m fine, I’ve got this!”

On the other hand, the things I do out of love almost never make common sense. I’m thinking of the time I celebrated my friend Phil’s 400th ascent of Mt Rainier by buying 400 of each his favorite mountaineering provisions. The cough drops and tea bags were fine but the chips and the cookies were quite voluminous so that I ended up delivering 8 storage bins full of stuff.

In honor of my mom, I’m taking a deeper look at what gets the best of my common sense. For the times I extend myself out of love, I’m keeping it. But if I’m extending myself out of duty or pride, I’m going to try to let it go.

Because sometimes when we lunge for things we end up in the hospital. The good thing about taking a dive at a senior residence is that there’s a good portion of the population that can’t remember the gossip. A woman with a great sense of humor but maybe not such a good memory said to my mom when she returned from the hospital, “I heard something about you but now I can’t remember what.”

(featured photo from Pexels)

Keep Small Things Small

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“You wanna fly, you got to give up the shit that weighs you down.” – Toni Morrison

The other day Mr D was upset and Miss O shared the wisdom, “Keep small things small.” I was taken by the phrase and asked her to tell me more after we got past our speed bump.

“It’s something Ms. Park says,” she elaborated providing the example that her second grade teacher, Ms. Park, said it the other day when there was a fly in the classroom. All the kids in the first row were trying to “attack it,” in Miss O’s words and Ms. Park wanted them to settle down. “Keep small things small.”

I thought of the parking problem I had the other day when I was turning around to take the space and someone slid right in. I was on the verge of making it a bigger story about how tough life is when someone made me laugh and I let it go.

It also reminded me of when Mr. D punched his sister in the gut the other day as they were wrestling. She said it hurt and he said he was sorry and they moved on. If they continue to be able to do that, it seems less likely that they’ll create a pattern of feeling disrespected and hurt that has plagued my siblings’ relationship in adulthood.

Keeping small things small speaks to me of airing wounds before they fester, identifying patterns before they become bad habits, stopping the internal dialogue before it goes on a self-critical rampage. It helps nail me to the present before I pile on added layers of time and repetition until whatever it is that is bugging me becomes unrecognizable. It means don’t hurt myself trying to attack a fly, whatever the metaphorical fly may be.

So here’s a new note to self courtesy of classroom 219 and all our brilliant and dedicated teachers: “Keep small things small.”

(featured photo from Pexels)

The Coming Radiance

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I’m not sure how many of you also followed Martha Hendricks of the White Hair Grace blog so forgive me for introducing someone you might already know. But for anyone who wasn’t, Martha was an 80-year-old blogger with non-Hodgkins lymphoma and sharing the stories of getting old gracefully. She had a lot of roles in her life. In her words, she was “professional classical singer; a Norwegian rosemaler; a pastor. And now a writer. “

I say “was” because she passed away this past August. But not before penning an incredible post that is as much about living as it is dying. So I’m reblogging this beautiful writing from an lovely woman:

whitehairgrace's avatarwhite hair grace

Dear friends, I am Martha’s eldest son posting these final words that mom felt she needed to share. She wrote this post August 12th, but didn’t publish it. My mom passed away peacefully, surrounded by her family this past Sunday, August 21st. She so loved writing this blog and sharing her life with all of you. Thank you all for the joy you gave her. She is with her beloved Dwight once again.

“Learning to be still, to be really still, and let life happen – that stillness becomes radiance.”

Morgan Freeman

My dear readers and followers – Hello again! Surprise!

When I wrote my last blog in May and closed out my White Hair Grace page, I thought that my work of seeking out the miracles of grace had reached a kind of natural conclusion. Of course, the best of intentions meet up with life’s larger plans, and here…

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Taking Risks

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“Sometimes it’s riskier not to take a risk. Sometimes all you’re guaranteeing is that things will stay the same.” – Danny Wallace

A few years ago, a man fell into the crater of Mt. St. Helens while taking a summit picture. He was standing too close to the edge when a huge piece of corniced snow fell off taking him with it.

When I heard the news, I thought, “Oh geez, I probably stood on just corniced snow there too.” On St. Helens, which blew a great deal of its top off when it erupted in 1980, it’s hard to tell where the actual rim is and the pull to look into the crater is powerful.

Taking risks, hopefully wiser ones than that, is the subject of my Wise & Shine post this week: Life: Risky Business.

(featured photo is me on the rim of Mt. St. Helens)