Year-End

There is no such thing in anyone’s life as an unimportant day.  ~Alexander Woollcott

The last day of the calendar year is no exception. I am blessed this morning with a day of vacation before tomorrow’s holiday. In fact, I have had a lovely long break from my day job at the end of 2007, and I am trying not to spoil these last two days by fretting about going back to work (i.e., being other than in the present moment)!

A few days ago, I wrote about the unimportance of the calendar in marking beginnings (see “A New Year” below), so I suppose the same goes for endings. Still, December 31 does prompt us to review the past year and to look ahead to the next, and I think there is value in that activity (see “Becoming”).

May I remember that each day of the new year is grace. May I live fully and with awareness and gratitude each of those important days.

What Others Think

Enslavement to the opinions of others is the source of a great deal of duplicity in modern society. How often we discover our action to be prompted, not by the divine Center, but by what others may say or think. Sadly, we must confess that our experience is all too frequently characterized by endless attempts to justify what we do or fail to do.  ~Richard J. Foster

You probably wouldn’t worry about what people think of you if you could know how seldom they do.  ~Olin Miller

How many of us were taught to consider first the appearance to others of our actions, rather than the rightness to ourselves? I have spent half a lifetime and a lot of therapy dollars unlearning that lesson, and still I catch myself sometimes justifying to others what I do or fail to do. Just look at my “About” page if you doubt me.

How liberating, though, to realize that I am my best counsel! Remaining open to the opinions and ideas of others, I strive to ultimately listen to my own voice, “divine Center” or conscience. There is a dearth of real courage in our society (as opposed to machismo/violence/aggression passed off for courage). I believe real courage requires us to be still, silent, reflective, and receptive–and these states are increasingly discouraged by modern lifestyles.

How do the opinions of others (real or imagined) shape your behavior, your thought, your deeds? What would change if you listened to your own wisdom?

A New Year

Better keep yourself clean and bright: you are the window through which you must see the world.  ~George Bernard Shaw

Any moment of any day, of course, can be (and is) the start of a new year. But the tradition in  our culture is to consider January 1 a new beginning. New Year’s Day for many people comes with a list of resolutions, most of which are abandoned by January 15 or so. I suppose we party with such reckless abandon on New Year’s Eve because we know we will pay penance with our resolutions the following day. It’s like that last binge eating spree before the diet starts. 

But I think we’re all wrong in this practice. First, because I think our intentions are important to consider every day of our lives; who knows whether there will be a tomorrow? Secondly, because we set impossible goals for ourselves with these lists by trying to think in terms of a whole year. And finally, because life is happening now, not later, not even in the next hour, certainly not next week.

I want to be a mindful being for as many moments of as many days of as many years as I have left on the planet. So I won’t make a list of resolutions next week. I’ll connect in this moment (and this, and this…) to my intentions toward right action, right speech, and lovingkindness toward everyone in the new year that begins right now.

Holidays

Anything is good material for poetry. Anything.  ~William Carlos Williams

Holidays have always been hard for me, since they involve seeing family. I remember a number of years when it was the end of February before I felt fully recovered from the experience of visiting family at Christmas. Ram Dass (with tongue in cheek) invites anyone who thinks they’re enlightened to spend time with family. At any rate, holidays remind me of family, and family reminds me of this poem.

Elegy For One Aggrieved

Yours was the sin of age.
Sedated in your easy chair
you had the eyes of the wild raccoon
on the screened-in porch
when the children blocked her escape.

Taken for a walk on forgiving ground
you suddenly knew what to do.
I tightened on your forearm to keep you
from lying down in each leafy depression
to die.

Later, in an unholy place,
people scurried to preserve your pulse
while you stared, leaden,
at the silly tins of peppermints
and would not eat.

Mine was the impotence of youth.
Now, on fall afternoons,
I lie in those leafy places
and cradle your grandmother bones
and softly, to your spirit, sing.

(originally published in Habersham Review, Autumn 1991)

Activism

I don’t try to change the world–not ever. It changes by itself, and I’m a part of that change. I’m absolutely, totally a lover of what is. When people ask me for help, I say yes. We inquire, and they begin to end their suffering, and in that they begin to end the suffering of the world.

Violence teaches only violence. Stress teaches stress. If you clean up your mental environment, we’ll clean up our physical one much more quickly…And if you do that genuinely, without violence in your heart, without anger, without pointing at corporations as the enemy, then people begin to notice. We begin to listen and notice that change through peace is possible. It has to begin with one person. If you’re not the one, who is?  ~Stephen Mitchell

For years I’ve had an ambivalence about social activism because I’ve seen so much of it further polarize people. Who am I to know what is best for the planet? Righteousness is no good; if we are to make a difference in the world, we must speak authentically, lovingly from the heart. Accusations and anger simply raise defenses. The world is perfect as it is, according to Mitchell (and his wife Byron Katie), but that’s no excuse for withdrawal or separation.

May I clear my mind, understand that the world is perfect just as it is, but stay connected with my heart to those who are suffering. May I question for the love of truth, not in order to save the world. And may I speak always, even to power, with honesty and kindness and without fear or anger.

Loss

To live in this world

you must be able
to do three things:
to love what is mortal;
to hold it

against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go.
~Mary Oliver, from “In Blackwater Woods”

I have sent this poem (again) to someone who is bereaved. What difficult human work Oliver describes! In an earlier entry on love and loss (click “loss” on the tag cloud at right), I quoted a Shakespeare passage that I think of often: “Ruin hath taught me thus to ruminate– / That Time will come and take my Love away: / –This thought is as a death, which cannot choose / But weep to have that which it fears to lose.”

Still, Oliver is right. We must love because our lives depend upon it, and we must let go when that time comes. I believe the more fully we can do Oliver’s three things, the richer life will be. How we do it, I can’t say, but I know it’s worthwhile to keep trying.

 (The entire poem is beautiful, and perhaps Oliver is annoyed that only the most powerful, conclusive lines are so often reprinted. I recommend reading it if you haven’t.)

Becoming

The thing that is really hard, and really amazing, is giving up on being perfect and beginning the work of becoming yourself.  ~Anna Quindlen

I have just completed the year-end ritual described in The Not So Big Life by Sarah Susanka. One of the questions (perhaps the most provocative and important one for me) is “What am I becoming?” The answer to this question, in my view, incorporates all one’s desires, longings, previous experiences, conditioned behaviors, reflections, and aspirations. What are you becoming?

Another question involves summing up all one’s desires and longings into one simple statement. My response at the moment is “I embody loving acceptance of what is, without fear or anger.”

And finally, I have once again confirmed my love of learning for its own sake.  I want to learn whatever is available to learn in a situation–inquisitively, not acquisitively. 

The Year-End Ritual instructions can be found at http://www.notsobiglife.com/resources/documents/TheYearEndRitual.pdf. Consider sharing your results!

What Is

The inner Self simply knows that behind all situations, challenges, and opinions, behind all questions of preference is the ground of what is, and that when we rest on that ground, we’re open to the grace that is the real source of contentment.  ~Sally Kempton

The ground of what is–not what the ego wants or what we think we want, not how we wish we were, but how it is right now, breathing in this world. I’m reminded of Byron Katie’s book, Loving What Is. I want to rest on the ground of what is here and now, how the world is here and now, how I am right here and right now. I love Walt Whitman’s lines, “there was never any more inception than there is now,/nor any more youth or age than there is now,/and will never be any more perfection than there is now,/nor any more heaven or hell than there is now.” Kempton says, “contentment is the gift that comes when you touch the timeless essence inside a particular moment of time–the ever-present now.”

Words

Writing and reading decrease our sense of isolation. They deepen and widen and expand our sense of life, they feed the soul. When writers make us shake our heads with the exactness of their prose and their truths, and even make us laugh about ourselves or life, our buoyancy is restored. We are given a shot at dancing with, or at least clapping along with, the absurdity of life, instead of being squashed by it over and over again. It’s like singing on a boat during a terrible storm at sea. You can’t stop the raging storm, but singing can change the hearts and spirits of the people who are together on that ship.  ~Anne Lamott

I am sometimes stunned by the power of words. This language that we take for granted can, as Lamott attests, lift us up and connect us to each other and everything in profound ways. Think about the last time you received an unexpected kind word. There is almost nothing more thrilling to me than an idea expressed in a new and graceful way. And I am ecstatically one with the world when I write what I think is a good poem. I believe that all artists fall in love with their creative media, and I think there is little doubt that my medium is words.

Life as Art

The Balinese say, “We have no art. Everything we do is art.”

What if we were to live as though everything we do is art? How would life change? For me, I suppose it would require mindfulness, attention to the present moment, a different relationship with time. I can really relate to Susanka’s assertion that she is “identified with being busy all the time.”  But that identification is unnecessary, as life will move at its own pace regardless of any attachment or resistance on our parts.

Maybe life as art is simply this: tuning in to the natural flow of life as it is, regardless of one’s situation. Being fully present in the unfolding, able to respond from the heart. Noticing life with curiosity and engagement rather than an object of our will.

Being a Beginner

In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s there are few.  ~Shunryu Suzuki

I’m convinced that the most direct path to our creativity starts from a place of unknowing. Or perhaps the creativity is the path. Young children know how to play their way into understanding, making mistakes, falling down, trying new approaches. But as we grow, those creative impulses are trained out of us. We become afraid of looking foolish, of not knowing, and we cling to certain answers, indisputable facts, narrow views. I want to recover the ability to see as a beginner, and I want to practice being a beginner over and over again, so that nothing becomes fixed and without possibilities.

Lessons

I have learnt silence from the talkative, toleration from the intolerant, and kindness from the unkind; yet strange, I am ungrateful to these teachers.  ~Kahlil Gibran

So many lessons in life have to be learned the hard way. I’m sure parents encounter this phenomenon often–the frustration of being unable to help children benefit from parents’ experiences. As a species, we just seem to have to learn some things through our own difficulties.

Gratitude is easy toward those who are kind to us, who assist us, who model the best in human character and effort. But there are so many who show us a better way by their own weaknesses and flaws. I was fortunate early in my career to have a boss that exhibited the antithesis of my management aspirations. Kindness is so important to me because I understand how it feels to be on the receiving end of unkindness.

Let me model the best in human character as much as possible, and hope that my actions flowing from my weaknesses can also be instructive to others in their development.

Wasteland of the Free

While we sit gloating in our greatness
justice is sinking to the bottom of the sea
Living in the wasteland of the free
~Iris DeMent

What has happened to the value of humility? How dangerous it is for the U.S. to be blind to our own shortcomings. It will be our undoing, I’m afraid. As in any organization, while it is important to recognize and celebrate what is healthy and growing, it is equally important to admit to and address systemic problems courageously. Otherwise, they can rot the system from the inside out, despite all the superficial successes.

I do wish Iris DeMent would put out another album!

Getting Out of the Way

…by simply listening to and recording your inner longings…they will begin to manifest in your life without your having to do anything else…by carefully listening to our hearts we seed our waking dream with those intentions. If we try to force our longings into being however, the door to their realization remains firmly shut…We have to get out of the way in order for the things we long for to start showing up, and when they do, they almost never look quite the way we had imagined.  ~Sarah Susanka’s blog at http://www.notsobiglife.com/

Well, this seems to be a theme this week–listening to the inner voice. I have read many accounts of witness to this phenomenon, that clutching the illusion of control inhibits finding that center. The concept of surrender has for so long been anathema to me, carrying a connotation of helplessly giving oneself over to the power of another. I spent my childhood practicing self-denial and self-betrayal (surrender) to survive, and my young adulthood rebelling against virtually everyone and everything that would try to control me. In the end resistance is no better than surrender, and I must learn to get out of my own way, to relax into all that is (what some call nature, God, the universe, a higher power). To wash myself of myself, as Rumi suggests, to be melting snow.

What is the middle way? Listening to the inner wisdom, being fully present in order to respond authentically from the heart, moving toward the heart’s desire but understanding that there is no controlling one’s life; there is only finding the path with that next step. How frightening that is!  But as Susanka says, “In fact we’ve never been in charge. We only thought we were.”

Speech

Before you speak ask yourself–is it kind, is it necessary, is it true, does it improve the silence?  ~Sai Baba

The more faithfully you listen to the voice within you, the better you will hear what is sounding outside. Only he who listens can speak.  ~Dag Hammarskjold

My friends remind me that speech is powerful and that I should consider its necessity carefully as well as its truth. I have to confess that after my post yesterday, I didn’t sit on the zafu, as I had planned, but rather continued to stew about things.

Today I must go to a funeral and shop for Christmas, but I resolve to find some time (if only 10 minutes) to listen to the “voice within” in order to better “hear what is sounding outside.” I am so good at planning and resolving, and it is so difficult to practice. But I am aware of my aspiration to right action, right speech. And so, so grateful for my friends.