Endings & Beginnings

The period of greatest gain in knowledge and experience is the most difficult period in one’s life. Through a difficult period you can learn; you can develop inner strength, determination and courage to face the problems. ~His Holiness the Dalai Lama

We don’t receive wisdom; we must discover it for ourselves after a journey that no one can take for us or spare us. ~Marcel Proust

The great thing in this world is not so much where we stand, but in what direction we are moving. ~Oliver Wendell Holmes

This could be my last post to this blog, at least for a time. It has marked my spiritual journey now for nearly two years, and I am finding it less and less compelling to write here. Most of the posts are timeless, and I hope others will continue to find quotes and commentary that is helpful or makes them think. I still welcome and will respond to comments.

As I begin the next phase of my life, I wish you well. Thanks to all who’ve stopped by.

We should all do what, in the long run, gives us joy, even if it is only picking grapes or sorting the laundry. ~E. B. White

The next message you need is always right where you are. ~Ram Dass

Turn your face to the sun, and the shadows fall behind you. ~Maori proverb

Rebirth

…human beings are not born once and for all the day their mothers give birth to them…life obliges them over and over again to give birth to themselves. ~Gabriel Garcia Marquez

I’m not sure it would be possible to count all the rebirths in my life, but I am grateful for most of them at least. There is something wonderful about new chances to move closer to what you aspire to be. I am now in the process of birthing a consulting business, which I plan to nurture slowly until retirement and bring into fuller flower (to mix the metaphor!) once I have retired. I hope this will give me the opportunity to share with others the benefit of my experience and learning over the years of my career.

In any event, I will no doubt continue to pursue learning, as it is my passion! And when we are learning, a myriad of possibilities present themselves. I hope to be reborn again and again before I have to leave this world.

Take note of the rebirths in your life. Are you moving always closer to the person you wish to be in the world?

From the Archives: June

I’m not afraid of storms for I’m learning how to sail my ship. ~Louisa May Alcott

As I review last June’s posts, I am struck by how few there are (five) compared to other months. And this month, only four. Hmmm, maybe this is the “off-season” for blogging for me! I do want to spend more time outside for sure. But here are three of my teachers from last year.

The Case Against Will helps me remember that only what I want to do, I will do. No “should-ing” will help me get there.

Graces enumerates a few of my abundant blessings, from The Shambhala Sun to music.

Attention! is another of my frequent reminders to myself not to squander my life away, but to be fully present for its unfolding.

What have you learned lately?

Plain, Common Work

The best things in life are nearest; breath in your nostrils, light in your eyes, flowers at your feet, duties at your hand, the path of right just before you. Then do not grasp at the stars, but do life’s plain, common work as it comes, certain that daily duties and daily bread are the sweetest things in life. ~Robert Louis Stevenson

I can hardly believe it’s been 21 days since my last post. What happened? Busy-ness. Vacation at Fort Mountain State Park. The Evergreen (software) International Conference. Excitement about the idea of starting my own consulting business. Family caretaking. Not enough yoga. Out-of-town meetings. Business lunches (fortune cookie: “A bold and dashing adventure is in your future within the year.”). Blind Willie McTell Blues Festival. Too much Facebook. Lots of reading (Olive Kitteridge may take its place among my favorites.).

Daily duties, daily bread. Sweet.

Gifts

Career counselor John Crystal offers the best way I have found to remember our gifts: “Think about those things you have always found it easy to do and don’t remember learning how.” We tend to value the knowledge and skills we have worked hard to acquire; if we earned it from the sweat of our brow it must be important, or so we tell ourselves. But when aspects of work or life come easy, we think they must not be all that important. Crystal asks us to consider the reverse, that the “things we have always found it easy to do” might point us toward our gifts. ~Russ S. Moxley, “It Also Takes Courage to Lead,” in Living the Questions: Essays Inspired by the Work and Life of Parker J. Palmer

Hey, maybe it’s OK not to know too much about how to write poetry, huh? I remember being dumbfounded at a poetry workshop years ago when poet Kate Daniels said to me, “You have a gift. You should develop it.”

I like this reversal of the idea that only that we slave over is important. I know that the best dancers/artists/writers/athletes/you-name-its are the ones who make it look effortless. And while I’m sure hard work is an important element for making it look so easy, I don’t think they could ever achieve that without natural talent, without flowing with their gifts.

What can you do easily that you don’t remember learning? Do you devalue it because there was no struggle involved? Perhaps it’s time to acknowledge and develop it as your gift.

In Praise of Slowness

There is more to life than increasing its speed. ~Gandhi

For fast-acting relief from stress, try slowing down. ~Lily Tomlin

Carl Honoré gives us a wonderful introduction to the Slow movement with his book, In Praise of Slowness: Challenging the Cult of Speed. For a long time, I have included on my blogroll a weblink for Slow Down Now, the delightful “official” website of The International Institute of Not Doing Much. Honoré has produced a more serious work on this topic, described by the Minneapolis Star Tribune as “part reportage, part manifesto…an engaging, well-written journey into the various ways that people around the globe have attempted to live more patiently.”

Honoré is not against speed on principle, pointing out that “speed has helped us to remake our world in ways that are wonderful and liberating,” using the examples of the Internet and jet travel. He just cautions us against “accelerating things that should not be accelerated.” He is against overwork, sleep deprivation, children coming home to empty houses, and our society’s loss of the art of doing nothing. We must use speed and slowness in tandem to avoid the crazymaking do-everything-faster mindset. (The author’s wake-up call was when he found himself elated to discover “One-Minute Bedtime Stories” to read to his two-year-old son.)

In one of the bleaker passages he writes, “Time-sickness can also be a symptom of a deeper, existential malaise. In the final stages before burnout, people often speed up to avoid confronting their unhappiness. [Milan] Kundera thinks that speed helps us block out the horror and barrenness of the modern world: ‘Our period is obsessed with the desire to forget, and it is to fulfill that desire that it gives over to the demon of speed; it picks up the pace to show us that it no longer wishes to be remembered, that it is tired of itself, sick of itself; that it wants to blow out the tiny trembling flame of memory.’”

I do think we often use speed to avoid living fully, to “temporarily” escape the awareness of death, to self-stimulate. Honoré reminds us, “All the things that bind us together and make life worth living–community, family, friendship–thrive on the one thing we never have enough of: time.”

May we be mindful of our obsession with speed!

Surrender

The goal of life is living in agreement with nature. ~Zeno

Here is one take on the idea of “surrender.” As the opposite of giving up one’s true nature or conforming, we can surrender to the truth of who we are and find our right place in the universe. I believe that is what we all long for. It is a theme I return to again and again: Csikszentmihalyi’s concept of Finding Flow; what David Whyte talks about in The Heart Aroused (The Soul at Work); and what Parker Palmer refers to as the integration of soul and role (An Undivided Life).

Surrender in this sense is not giving in, but giving up the illusion of control, letting go of the defenses we have built against our heart’s desires. Those defenses may stem from parental or societal expectations, fear of failure, fear of success, or myriad other things.

If you surrendered to your heart’s desire, what would you be doing? What would your life look like if you were in agreement with your true nature?

From the Archives: May

Writing is an exploration. You start from nothing and learn as you go. ~E. L. Doctorow

Selected posts from last May:

Radical Acceptance
This is a transformative practice.

Life is Now
Tolle exhorts us to pay less attention to our life situations, and more attention to life itself.

Faults-Image
Do we place greater value on projecting a positive image or accepting reality (in which we are all flawed)?

The Soul at Work
….or, as Parker J. Palmer calls it, the integration of soul and role

Spiraling

All truly wise thoughts have been thought already thousands of times; but to make them truly ours, we must think them over again honestly, till they take root in our personal experience. ~Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

I imagine many layers of learning when I think about this quote. So often, I have heard and understood words of wisdom, only to return to them later with deeper understanding. I think of learning as a spiral; there are only so many truly important lessons in this life, and each day we learn them in a new way–returning to the same ideas, but at a higher (or deeper) level. If we are lucky, curious, and skillful, we acquire wisdom in the process.

It is such a loss for our culture that we devalue aging and the elderly. As I get older, I see so clearly the benefits of time and cumulative experience. If only we tapped the wisdom of our elders. Perhaps as the baby boomers move into old age, we can hope for a greater appreciation of this tremendous resource, but there is always a temptation to dismiss ones who are not “up on” the latest trends and technological gadgets.

I think Goethe is also saying that we must work at wisdom; it doesn’t happen as a function of simply living longer. Life provides opportunities daily to stretch, to delve, to reflect. We must pay attention, bring our intelligence and our hearts to bear on our experience.

I can see myself continuing to spiral higher, deeper, until death. How about you?

Why I Write

I write to fuse inside with out,
to salve wounds and broken dreams.
I write to understand the many things
no one has told me,
to stroke my moments clean,
to squeeze them into tiny mirrored fragments
shining with mindlight.
I write to turn my blood to ink,
to fertilizer, to sap.
I write so that my eyes can feel,
so that my heart can lick,
so that my soul can crawl from its hiding place
and gaze upon a mystery
which can be neither solved nor explained.
I write
to breathe my spirit alive.
~Dawna Markova, from Living the Questions: Essays Inspired by the Work and Life of Parker J. Palmer

There is a wonderful book of essays by 26 writers called Why I Write: Thoughts on the Craft of Fiction, edited by Will Blythe. This book, the poem by Markova, and the many writers I have read on writing (see also Writers on Writing) have inspired me to think about the question for myself.

It seems to me that I write in order to hear myself think. Parker Palmer suggests listening others into speech; perhaps writing is my way of listening myself into meaning. Markova’s essay is called “Thinking Ourselves Home.” She says, “I start in solitude. I start in silence. I start from the truth of where I am now to engage in a live encounter with myself. I start thinking myself home…What brings us to wisdom is using our consciousness to reflect on our thinking. It doesn’t just happen to us as we grow older.”

Why I Write

I write to hear myself into meaning,
to note echoes and mysteries.
I write to be aware of each sensation,
to approach it curiously,
to tunnel as close to its center
as my attention will allow.
I write to open to discovery,
to learn, to learn
to dive below the turbulence
where the water is calm and flowing.
I write to encounter
the unfolding of experience
so that when it has passed
I have known it.

Beauty Seen

Beauty seen makes the one who sees it more beautiful. ~David Steindl-Rast

Who Is Seeing

A dark cloud streak
topped by silver-white brilliance
hovers above
the pink-orange corona
of the rising sun.

I have been tugged awake
inexplicably,
called to beauty
by the part of me
that is sunrise,
or the part of sunrise
that is me.

Love and Kindness

No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted. ~Aesop

The important thing is not to think much, but to love much; and so do that which best stirs you to love. ~St. Teresa of Avila

Today we visit my mother-in-law in the nursing home. She will know who we are, but she won’t remember we’ve been there. Still, she loves the hot tea Sam brings her and enjoys the attention while we’re there. So it is important to go.

Today, I want to focus on the kindness, the connection, the beauty of this sunny Easter day, and not the aging and end-of-life ruminations that usually take me over when we visit. I want to be mindful of each moment for what it is, and leave the thinking out of the experience. This is difficult for someone who has spent her entire life relying on “figuring things out” with her brain in order to survive and thrive.

I am grateful for growing into more love, less thought. I am grateful for another day in which to practice mindfulness, kindness, love. Namaste.

Moonlit Morning

Something precious is lost if we rush headlong into the details of life without pausing for a moment to pay homage to the mystery of life and the gift of another day. ~Kent Nerbern

Only Moment

Moon floods the morning kitchen,
trumps even the coffeepot
for my attention.
I am drawn onto the deck
to stand in the stillness,
the only sound a soft purr
from the cat on the rail
rubbing herself against my winter robe–
not even a meow of greeting.
My headache gives way to wonder:
clouds racing through the constellations.
The only moment of its kind, I think
as I move on
to poems, coffee, books.

Flowing Water

There is guidance for each of us and by lowly listening, we shall hear the right word. Certainly there is a right for you that needs no choice on your part. Place yourself in the middle of the stream of power and wisdom which flows into your life. Then, without effort, you are impelled to truth and to perfect contentment. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

Today I said to Terry that I want to be flowing water. Maybe becoming flowing water is the way to be on one’s true path. (I almost said “the first step on the path”–oh, my ingrained habit of linear thought!)

I see this process of becoming flowing water as acceptance, letting go of resistance, and dwelling–as Thoreau advises–”as near as possible to the channel in which your life flows.”

What does this mean in practical, day-to-day terms? I think it means deep listening, stillness (ironically), and shedding the illusion of control. We have control over very little in this life, and yet we behave as though the world cannot turn without our efforts.

This week, I want to hold an image of flowing water, to be as close as possible to the channel in which my life flows, and to notice how that feels.

Morning Haiku

Keep on starting, and finishing will take care of itself. ~Neil Fiore

The act of opening my writing notebook did the trick this morning.

my expectations
clashing with reality
finding my balance

alive with movement
color-laden branches bow
redbuds are humming

waking from a dream
about a former lover
feeling beautiful

words that don’t connect
in the nursing home hallway
she’s dreaming aloud