Tag: openness

Bottomless Questions

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“Keep your feet on the ground and your thoughts at lofty heights.” – Peace Pilgrim

When I awaken every morning, I tiptoe past both the kids closed bedroom doors and walk downstairs with the cat winding her way around my ankles. After I feed her and do a little stretching or yoga, I meditate. I have three or four books that I keep next to my meditation cushion and I read these short meditations as I sip my tea. The thing I like best about this practice is that when I flip to the page for April 20th in the Book of Awakening by Mark Nepo for instance, what is written there is usually something different that whatever is on the top of my mind for the day. It takes me out of my life for a moment to ponder a bigger or deeper theme instead of the logistics of my day.

So today when I opened another of my books, A Year of Daily Joy by Jennifer Louden, I loved that what she proposed, “Try asking bottomless questions – the kind that tantalize and stretch you.” Her examples were “How can I love more?” and “What do I want to create today?”

I sat with this idea for a while, watching the sun start to play on the house across from me, the birds flitting in and out of my plum tree, the feeling of observation starting to warm up my engagement with life and came up with this question “How can I bring curiosity into what I see and do today?”

The feeling of that question matches with my mood when I awaken. Light and open — and curious. My morning routine helps me set the tone for the day so that even long after what I read gets forgotten in the bustle of the day, I am still sustained by the broader horizon that came with my morning moments. I love the idea of posing that bottomless question to intentionally lengthen that note throughout the busy-ness of the day.

The Crux Move

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“One climbs, one sees. One descends, one sees no longer, but one has seen. There is an art in conducting oneself in lower regions by memory of what one has seen higher up. When one can no longer see, one can at least still know.” – Rene Daumal

I can picture the hardest move from one of my favorite routes in the rock climbing gym. It’s after you have climbed halfway up the 50 foot wall and then the wall juts out over your head so that to get past it, you have to lean backwards, reach your hand up where you can’t see and throw your leg out awkwardly to the side to counter-balance. It’s the crux move. The one that takes such balance, confidence and hope to overcome but leads to a gently inclined section that is a breeze to climb to the top.

Even though it’s been five years since I have regularly climbed on that route at the gym, whenever I get to a tough place in life I think of that crux move. It’s how I relate to the hard spots in life like the one I’m facing one now. My brother’s wife, Lindsey, who has nannied for me for five years is quitting to take her dream job. She has been here for me and my kids 2-3 days/week and in the coronavirus era, 4 days week to take care of everything. She has been the closest thing I have to a co-parent.

I am genuinely happy for Lindsey as my friend and sister-in-law and the time feels right for a change. But I’m also facing uncertainty as I wait for the school district to finalize their plan for in-person school. I’m hanging in this space in between what has been and what will be all the while trying to hold the ship steady and work.

The hallmark of these crux moves is the feeling of being off-balance and in fear. Life is pushing a shift, a shift that makes us live more out in the open because we aren’t treading our well-worn path. That exposure creates a tenderness against which fear is so much more palpable. For me, I fear that Lindsey will be relieved to be away from us and if so, does it mean she doesn’t love us and this work of raising kids isn’t worthwhile? And if I imagine Lindsey’s end, she is probably afraid that we don’t need her and aren’t grateful for all the time she gave us.

This fear leaves me feeling so vulnerable. I want to stack up all the irritations and hurts I can find, even though they are relatively few in order to block feeling this way.  But that’s when I come back to the muscle memory of the crux move. Learning to climb them taught me they go better if I’m not tense. The more I cling to whatever hand holds I have, the faster my arms burn out. But if I breathe deeply and relax into it, I preserve my strength for where I’m going. Even when I can’t see the next hand hold yet, I can feel my way into the timing so that I have momentum to help move me up and over. There is great joy in moving through a crux move because it requires the body, mind and spirit to all come together. Applying it this way, I get a glimpse of how no experience in life is wasted because our “play” helps create pathways through “life.”

I read recently that good-bye came about as a short way of saying “God be with you.” Saying it that way reminds me that we are all on a journey and the best way to help others along is to wish them well. So I wish Lindsey, God be with you, and I trust that the next move I make will carry me and my family through our crux move to the next part of our journey.