Tag: meditation

The Core Message

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“If what you believe does not impact how you behave then what you believe is not important.” – Shaykh Yassir Fazaga

I was challenged by a question in Frederick Buechner’s meditation book Listening to Your Life: If you had to write a last message for the few people that you care about the most in 25 words or less, what would it be? I pondered this, tried it, revised it, slept on it, wrote it again. It’s hard. I never got it down to 25 words or less but here’s my favorite version in 45 words:

You are beautiful and precious, worthy of love. I am rooting for you in every endeavor, holding you in every tear, and standing tall beside you when you speak your truth. Cultivate silence. Stay rooted in learning and growth, leaning towards life. Never stop trying.

And you know what I liked best about this exercise? It’s like writing out my value statement about how I want to live. It seems like if I can distill that, it’ll tether me to my ground in the moments when I feel I’ve lost my way.

The Process

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“Inspiration usually comes during work, rather than before it.” – Madeleine L’Engle

Last summer I decided to paint the exterior of my house. Not knowing if I could really do it, I just thought I’d start with the south facing side that needed it the most. I was not changing the color so I told myself I could at the very least try and if I couldn’t do it, formulate a different plan. I purchased the supplies, pulled out my 20 foot ladder, started with the roller with an extension and tried to get the highest boards above my back patio. I must have gone up and down that ladder 20 times in the first few boards – changing where I put the paint, putting on different shoes, remembering the paint rag, taking off the roller extension, putting it back on. I was shaky at first but kept adapting the system until I got into a rhythm. The process reminded me of so much of Madeleine L’Engle’s quote.

It happens to me every time I write. I know that any blogger that reads this will relate. I sit down to do it and what comes out is usually different than what I thought I was writing. Something happens in the middle that as I write, it’s changing me and I’m changing where I’m going and how I think. It’s funny how thinking about doing it and actually doing it are two very different things.

And parenting – I wrote that post about how I joked before I had kids that I was going to run a family like I was a referee and I could use calls from any sport I could think of. Which was a little in jest but telling for how I thought parenting calls would be easy to make. I know both my style and how I feel about it have changed with the first and again with the second child. It’s not until you are elbow deep in diapers that the epiphanies come – about love, messiness and vulnerability.

I find out over and over again that the key with all these life endeavors is starting. Because waiting until it’s all wrapped up in a bow in my mind is never how it is finished. It’s a messy process of participating in the creation and unfolding of life. It’s jumping in and trying something and discovering something in the trying. It feels like I learn and relearn this. Every time I jump into a new venture, I think it’s going to be perfect at the start. It never is and then I have to adjust my thinking to remember that isn’t failure, it’s the process.

When I started painting the house, I thought I’d just do the most weathered boards. After all, it was a silly thing to do when I had no time because of kids and work. But I found it to be so satisfying to see the house change that over the next few weeks, I moved on to do almost off of the house except the highest portions. My mom thought it was such a great idea that she came over to help too! Inspiration usually comes during the work, rather than before it.

Calm and Still

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“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, therefore, is not an act but a habit” – Aristotle

Bees and I have come to an agreement. I’ll stay still and be calm and they won’t sting me. This agreement has taken a lot of years to broker since when I get stung, I puff up and stay that way, itchy and uncomfortable, for about five days. But I consider it part of my work to breathe deeply and not see them as an enemy.

The agreement went down the drain the other night when a yellow jacket stung my toddler. We were eating outside and they started swarming around. Since he’s just almost two he hasn’t had the chance to do his work and learn to be still and calm. In response to the sting, I wanted to kill them all.

It’s insidious – this ratcheting up of life’s lessons. I’ve come to accept pain as a great teacher, aches as a sign of growth, and to slow down and take life as it comes. But now I see I have so much more to learn about not taking umbrage on my kid’s behalf when pain comes.  This feels especially hard because I think it’s hard to hold other people when they are hurting and I can’t control the pace of how they move through it. In my discomfort, I want to problem solve and be done. It’s also hard because it’s my job to keep my kids safe so it feels like failure.

So all of this swirls as I consider my murderous rage for yellow jackets. My work on being calm and still is never done, I just have more to learn. But I take heart from a great quote I saw last week posted by TheEnglightenedMind622  “Don’t be afraid to start over again. This time, you’re not starting from scratch, you’re starting from experience.” I sit and try to be grateful for the chance to deepen the lesson and try not see neither bees nor pain as an enemy, not even on my son’s behalf.

Getting a Boost

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“Hardships often prepare ordinary people for an extraordinary destiny.” – C.S. Lewis

When I trekked to Everest Base Camp in 2001, I spent 15 days at or above 10,000 feet. In those days, my body produced more red blood cells to try to make up for the lack of the oxygen in the air. When I returned to sea level everything felt so much easier because of my body’s improved ability to deliver oxygen. Walking was like floating over the ground. Climbing a hill seemed like a mild little bump in my stride. My hardest workout felt like I could do it twice.

Two things happened this weekend that made me think we are going to experience a post-pandemic boost in the same way. First my mom’s retirement community has started allowed children to visit again. They have to be masked and go right up to my mom’s apartment but we can go spend time with her as a family again! The second thing is that our neighborhood community center is hosting food trucks in the parking lots on Friday nights so we have a little bit of community gathering outside again.

After the lockdown for 16 months, these things make life just feel easier. Although the pandemic has affected us all differently, I think it’s fair to say that we’ve all been impacted in one way or another. All the things we’ve done to cope have been challenging – we’ve adopted new technology, grieved the way life used to be, changed our patterns for shopping, eating out, going to school and work, lost jobs or found new ones, meditated, prayed and showed up differently. So I celebrate the moments when we all get that boost where life feels like it’s a piece of cake.

Of course getting to Everest base camp and gaining that acclimatization isn’t easy. On our trip, two women turned back on the second day and on the fifth day, Bill from Michigan got sick and had to stay at a local clinic until we picked him up on our way down. The day before we trekked into base camp, several of us were to feel well enough to climb Kala Patar, an 18,200 feet peak with great views of Mt. Everest but there were a couple of folks with headaches so thunderous they didn’t want to leave their tents. And so it is with the pandemic, I grieve for those that didn’t make it, thank the Universe that we are still here and enjoy the moments where everything feels easy!

The Ups and the Downs

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“To lose balance, sometimes, for love, is part of living a balanced life.” – Elizabeth Gilbert

On Monday my son had a terrible day, he was still not feeling well from a bug he picked up at the beach. But my daughter had a fantastic day going to a camp hosted by her teacher from last year laughing and playing with all the classmates that she didn’t get enough time together in-person with this school year. I felt like I usually do, a fulcrum, trying to balance between the two or more often, being tipped to the side of the lowest mood. As I wondered to myself how to harden my heart so as not to be influenced by the state of my loved ones, I laughed out loud at my query. Harden my heart?

My perception is that when I’m alone, I float along pretty evenly in a mostly happy state. Even if that isn’t an accurate reflection of life alone, a time I can barely remember being that it’s been almost six years since that’s been the case, life without any ups and downs had no markers by which I can tag one way or the other. Going along evenly means I can’t really recall anything momentous. But now, with the ups and downs of my kids affecting me deeply, I am so grateful for an easy and happy hour. I also remember them –like the morning this week when we were all on my bed and the kids taking turns falling over, bouncing so hard on the mattress that they popped almost halfway back up and laughing at each other. The tumult of this time with my little family all riding the waves in one boat means that I’m constantly being drawn back to this moment and the feeling of now.

When I sit on my cushion and try to meditate, the practice is to continually bring myself back to the current moment, to bring awareness to now, to stop the mind from perseverating on the constant lists of what else to do and where else to be. Over and over I do this and then try to lean into whatever I’m feeling, good or bad until those distinctions melt away. The practice deepens the awareness of what I’m experiencing right now but loosens the attachments that I place on whether I like it or not. In some ways, parenting is calling me to do the same practice. Show up in this moment, lean in to whatever the feeling is and let go of any judgment of whether I like it or not. In other words, my kids are making me a spiritual guru!

But I still daydream of the easy days when it was just me and my dog bouncing along on that every-present golden retriever enthusiasm. Even then I remember the racking grief that came at the end of his beautiful life. There are no ups without downs. I’m not going to harden my heart because that means missing the ups. It’s a messy life now but I love it.

Deep Knowing

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“The inner life of any great thing will be incomprehensible to me until I develop and deepen an inner life of my own.” – Parker J. Palmer

I was standing in the crowded reception hall after my father’s funeral service greeting people, feeling the comfort of the huge tide of love for my dear father carry me through the ache of missing him when one of his close friends came up and whispered in my ear. She said, “You were his favorite.” I wanted to turn and joke with her that she said that to all the kids but the truth of it choked off any chance of reply. It was something that I knew way down deep but never would have said, something that I wanted so badly to be true because I loved him so, and something I needed to hear to affirm that bond I felt with him.

On the morning of November 7th, 2014 my 79-year-old father spent an hour or two reading in the sunshine on the back patio of the home he and my mom owned in Tucson, Arizona. He had just accepted a position as president of the board of an organization serving people in the Middle East and was planning out the next meeting while my mom was out playing golf. He must have felt the need to get some exercise so he placed his open book face down on the chair, put on his helmet, hopped on his bike and started riding the route that they often took through their quiet community. He’d gone three blocks when he hit a car coming through an intersection, suffered blunt trauma to his neck and died within a minute.

A year-and-a-half before he died, I was out walking my dog on a bright Seattle spring morning and the song Circle of Life from the Lion King came into my head. My eyes filled with tears as I knew my beloved father was going to die. It wasn’t an urgent feeling but just a recognition of the eventuality and an insistence on talking with him and writing about his life and faith. It was absurd on the face of it. I was too new in my spiritual path to relate to his, I wasn’t a writer and I’d heard his stories all my life. But the voice was clear that I listen. So I did. Over the next 18 months, I sat down and recorded conversations with my father.

So when my dad died that Friday morning, I was in the best place possible, if that can be true about a death. I’d said “good-bye” to my parents the week before when we’d met for breakfast in Seattle before they drove down to Tucson. That morning, my dad looked at me and said, “You look great.” Which I’d understood had nothing to do with my outward appearance but everything to do with the twinkle that was back in my eye. I had survived divorce, found myself and God on a meditation mat and spent that precious time listening to him. We’d spent so much intentional time together that there was a special closeness we’d developed on top of our father-daughter bond. There wasn’t anything that was left unsaid between us. I loved him and he loved me and saying it 1,000 more times wouldn’t make losing him any easier, I’d always want more.

My dad’s death made me know, really know, that the insistent voice, the voice I think of as the God voice, is a trusted Guide. As a Presbyterian pastor for 40 years, I know my dad led many people in faith. But I’d like to think that my spiritual awakening was his most proud accomplishment. Actually, that’s false modesty because I know it was just as I know I was his favorite. He bore witness to a life well-lived because of the deep joy, rich meaning and complete reassurance of a strong faith. Faith that carries us through the tough moments, seasons and challenges. Faith that leads us to do what we need to do. And I heard him and that carries me through the tough moments of losing him which is exactly what he wanted for me, for all of us.

It makes me ache for my brother and sister that they didn’t get the chance to talk to him the way that I did. And it makes me wonder about how God could provide for me so well but not them. But I’ve come to understand that we all got exactly what we needed. My spiritual path led me to be able to have those substantive conversations about faith before he died. It didn’t matter that my dad saw God through the lens as a Presbyterian and I see God through my Buddhist-Christian-meditative lens, we talked about what was crucial to a meaningful life. My siblings have a different experience of faith, life and my father that I believe has left them with an open question that they have an opportunity to solve. Whether or not they do so is their path.

I haven’t told anyone the secret my dad’s friend shared with me at his funeral until this post. As the youngest child in the family, my siblings never listen to me so I think it’s safe to assume they won’t read this and the secret is still safe. Being my dad’s favorite means honoring him with my life and maybe one day my siblings or my children will come to me wanting to know what I learned. And I’ll pass it on.

So, dear reader, I ask you: Is there anything your voice is telling you that you haven’t listened to yet?

Celebrating Independence

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“Time has a wonderful way of showing us what really matters.” – Margaret Peters

It’s Independence Day in America. Which is of course about the country and not about me but it makes me think about the long history I have with the word independence.

Independence was one of the most prized attributes a kid could have in my family. I wonder if that’s because I am the youngest of three and my mom was busy trying to find out how to best challenge her very smart brain within the confines of being a minister’s wife and a mother of three kids. If I’d ask for a ride, she’d hand me the bus schedule. If I wanted her to play tennis with me, there was a certain amount of practice I had to do on my own before I’d qualify.

Then there was the college boyfriend who broke my heart for the first time. He had introduced me to the poem, Comes the Dawn by Veronica Shoffstall that includes the lines, “So you plant your own garden and decorate your own soul, Instead of waiting for someone to bring you flowers.” In my bereft state after we split apart, I remember those lines popping into my head as the best idea of independence I’d ever heard.

So when I was 30-years-old and wanted to buy a house, I was dating a guy whose only contribution to the effort was a list of the neighborhoods he’d like to live in. He clearly wasn’t the right one for me and I knew I could do it independently so I broke up with him and did.

Then my father came over and taught me so many of the skills I would need to own a home: tiling, replacing a toilet, installing crown molding. On one of our projects to dry wall a room, we couldn’t finish before he had to leave so he helped me build a system of platforms so I could finish independently. He knew I couldn’t wait until he had time to return.

 When I got married in my mid-30’s, one of my husband’s complaints about me was that I was so independent. He could say the word so harshly that the last syllable cracked like a whip. It stung because I had always thought that was one of most prized qualities, after all my parents thought it was. And wow, he seemed so needy to me which might have been one of his qualities that led him to be unfaithful.

So we got divorced and even though I’d refused to have kids when I was married, I wanted them now that I was alone and 45-years-old. I went to a fertility clinic and found out that I could have them independently and so, I did!

Now I have two beautiful kids and am wondering if independence will be once of the most prized traits that I teach them. The mirror of introspection tells me that my version of independence might be an avoidance of vulnerability. I have an inkling that my greatest strength might also be my greatest weakness.

It’s taken me half a lifetime to realize that there is a fine line between independence and isolation, something that applies to both me as an individual and us collectively as a country. Believing that you don’t need anyone else to help solve your problems only tends to increase the size of the problems that you need to solve. Like climate change. Or world peace. So on this Independence Day, I celebrate the kind of independence that comes with the knowledge that we need others to be our best selves!

Coming Unstuck

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“Self-pity in its early stages is as snug as a feather mattress. Only when it hardens does it become uncomfortable.” – Maya Angelou

On Thursday morning my son cried all the way to daycare. He is such an affable little person that I was stunned that none of the usual tricks could distract him.  I pieced together from his two word sentences, Tay hoome (stay home) and EA come (his nanny come) he wanted to stay home and have the nanny come. When we reached his daycare and I was getting him out of the car, I started to stay, “When you cry like that, we…” and my daughter chimed in to finish the sentence, “suffer.”

I can’t say exactly what he’s thinking or how he’s grasped this but in the two weeks since his sister finished Kindergarten, he’s figured out that she’s staying home and the nanny is coming. I imagine he has some toddler sense of the unfairness that he still has to go to school three days a week. It’s unfair. Life is unfair. I think one of the easiest feelings to get stuck in. I think of this passage from The Book of Awakening by Mark Nepo:

I know now that, over the years, my own cries that life is unfair have come from the inescapable pain of living, and these cries, while understandable, have always diverted me from feeling my way through the pain of my breakage into the re-formation of my life. Somehow, crying “Unfair” has always kept me stuck in what hurts.

The Book of Awakening by Mark Nepo

At the time I first read it, I was stuck in unfairness. I was trying to undo the damage of the hurt done to me by an unfaithful ex-husband while everyone else seemed to be thriving. I read that passage and knew, really knew that the only thing keeping me in that place was me. That somehow I had taken the unfortunate chain of events that led up the implosion of life as I’d known it and made those my story, instead of the rest of me. There may have been a time that self-pity was fitting but then, as the Maya Angelou quote says, it had hardened around me and I was stuck.

I hadn’t intended to finish my sentence to my son with “suffer.” I was going to say, “When you cry like that, we don’t know what to do to make it better.” But suffer is pretty apt as well. When we get stuck in the unfairness of things, we suffer. No one around knows what to do to make it better. But all it takes to stop is to set the intention to find the beauty of where you are and do it again and again until one day you find you don’t need to. My son must have done some version of that because his teachers said he had a great day at school.

The Great Turnaround

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“If you want to lift yourself up, lift up someone else.” – Booker T. Washington

The other night we were eating dinner outside and my five-and-half-year-old daughter was feeling discontent. She didn’t like what we were eating, she didn’t like the chair she was sitting in, nothing wasn’t quite right with her and I don’t think she could name the source. Then the ice cream truck came and she asked if she could get some. I said she could if she handled the transaction and used her own money. She asked $20? And I said, “No, $4” which still seems like a ridiculous price to me.

She went inside, found everything she needed: wallet, mask and shoes and for the very first time, handled the ice cream truck transaction all by herself. It was just on the other side of the fence from where I sat so I could hear the tenor of what was going on, if not the details, and I knew my neighbor was there to help her if she needed it.

Soon enough she came back…with two popsicles. She had chosen to get one for her brother. The ice cream man told her she needed to pay $4 more and she debated about the big spend but decided that her most beloved brother was worth it.

The transformation of her mood was the most remarkable thing. She felt confident and generous. It was like watching a drooping flower stand back up and shine again. She told the story with all the details multiple times and just radiated!

It was a beautiful lesson for me. That we are all better when we are giving. And that to turn things around in a day, it just takes one moment of choosing to do something gracious and it will lift up everyone around. When her brother couldn’t finish his popsicle and gave it back to her to finish, it was easy to see that the spirit of giving had turned into the spirit of giving back.

Co-Creators

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“Be kind whenever possible. It is always possible.” – Dalai Lama

Listening to a podcast with Tara Brach and Dr. Kristin Neff about fierce self-compassion, Kristin told a story about a man she worked closely with and once supported who turned out to be a narcissist and sexually abusive to young women. She said something like, “Until this happened, I had no idea how many narcissists were around but so many people I’ve talked to have a story about one.” And sure enough, what popped into my head was the narcissist that once was in my life. I worked with him and he was once good friends with my ex-husband. Because our relationship was tangential, I’ve largely dismissed any effect that he had on me but I realized as I listened that there are so many unkind things he said about women that pop into my head more than they should. Like the time he said a particular woman was like butter. And I naively asked what? “She’d be totally hot but-her face.”  That I remember that probably a dozen years or more since it was said, goes to show how powerful words can be.

Later on in the podcast Dr. Neff, an assistant professor of research at University of Texas, talked about the idea that we are co-creators of our lives. The people around us influence who we are. That makes me so grateful that I spend most of my time with my kids who are joy monsters. And it also explains why they affect me so deeply – not only because my observations of them resonate with my own experience in such a lived way that I learn great lessons but also because they are changing me as part of my ongoing story.

It also calls me to really intentional about what I let in. As I was listening to the podcast, remembering about the narcissist who used to be in my life and the things he said, my eyes caught a picture of my wise and kind dad. In great contrast to the narcissist, my dad would have never said those unkind or demeaning things about women. I had this perfect a-ha moment when I knew I’d let a narcissist affect my assumptions about how men thought of women in general and that was a great deal more influence than I should have ever given him. If our lives are co-created with other people, I want to make sure to draw my conclusions from those around me that I admire, respect and inspire me and to edit out the rest.