Your Life is Your Practice

The three fireplaces are my favorite attributes of our new home. I'm still working on the living room fireplace, so I've yet to post photos of it. The living room is the one place we're still waiting to put together. Our new couch is on its way and once it arrives everything should come together nicely.

This is the bedroom fireplace. Our bed faces this mantel, and I've kept the decorating to a minimum. The colors in here are keeping with black and white, and darker woods. On the walls near the bed I've put up two large Ansel Adams photographs in black and white, and a local artist's black and white framed photo of the weeping bride in Savannah's historic graveyard.

I read a wonderful article in Tricycle yesterday about how to incorporate your meditation practice into everything you do. It's a great reminder that we are never too busy to bring mindfulness into our lives.

I really like the idea that Thich Nhat Hahn puts forth in his book The Miracle of Mindfulness. He suggests picking one day a week to make your own day of mindfulness. It's a day in which from the moment you wake up you follow a set intention to watch the breath and to be fully engaged in everything you do. You wake in the morning and the first thought should be "waking in the morning, I take a deep breath in and a deep breath out." Something along those lines in whatever way works for you. Then you go throughout the day alternating meditation times with work tasks. When you do the dishes, or make the bed, you only do the dishes and you only make the bed. Your thoughts and your awareness is fully with each thing you do while you do it, and also on your breath.

I'd like to consider over the course of the next week when a a day might be which I can give to this practice. The women's retreat in West Viriginia is coming up in just a few short weeks, when I will spend five days in silence, meditating most hours of the day, waking at 5am with the monks and nuns, eating very little, and practicing austerities. It's become my priority to prepare myself now by making my life my practice.

Leaving the Self in order to Love the Self

I've been re-reading Thich Nhat Hanh's The Miracle of Mindfulness today, and turning once again back to my practice, which has long been neglected. Final exams + three week illness + moving = easy distractions. It's important not to "punish" ourselves for dropping our committment to the practice. What is important is maintaining the will and earnst desire to return to it.

Compassion for ourselves is a topic hanging around in my mind for well over a year now. It's a captivating idea for most of us. It immediately draws our attention and creates that pulling feeling in our hearts and stomachs. It has this power because we know it is something which is literally dying to be cultivated more.

The tricky thing about having compassion for ourselves is that it's not as straight-forward or easy as it at first appears. When I first began to truly come face to face with the notion of self compassion as a necessary ingredient to growing loving-kindness for others, there was a sort of niave decision that declared "Yes, I am going to do this! I am going to be heedful of forgiving myself and being kind and gentle." The thing is, situations come up which make this simple task incredibly complicated and, at times, even seemingly impossible.

I don't have all of the answers for you on how to shine right through all of the complexities and difficulties of loving ourselves. I can, however, share this one small nugget of a lesson hard-earned this past weekend.

The details are not that important, but here is the brief of it: I found myself in the excitement of a moment, became totally heedless, drank far more than my reasonable share of wine, and without thinking twice wound up accidently causing another person great embarassment. Now that's an excruciating one, isn't it? The mistake of such carelessness, in its aftermath, burns like full sun into a tunnel of once safe and quiet darkness.

It begs the question of forgiveness. How do we forgive ourselves for harming another? Of course it was never my intention to cause someone else suffering. There was absolutely no ill-will involved. It was simple carelessness. But what's truly hard, for myself, is to find a way to forgive myself and move forward.

Coming back to the meditation path is one step in the right direction. I resolved that I would need to sit with it, literally, and really look deeply into the source of anguish now lingering heavily over me. This is one tool which I've taken from various sources of spiritual wisdom. When something is painful, go right into the searing heart of it. Look directly into what's really hurting. What I found surprised me.

What was causing so much residual pain was not actually the knowledge that I had hurt someone else by embarassing them, it wasn't actually about the other person at all. It was about me. It hurt to be a person who had caused another embarassment. It had everything to do with self and becoming and nothing to do with real or genuine remorse. This first deep realization was the epitome of staring straight into the painful heart of the matter -- it hurt even more. This is the exact place where the healing becomes possible. This is the precise point where we need to dig our hearts and minds deeper and stretch ourselves creatively.

I found in this moment what needed to be done in order to stop the terrible pain, the self-loathing, and the vicious cycle which often sours into self-hatred and self-anger, and robs us of real growth with compassion.

What I needed to do was move my attention from this point of self and turn it towards the person who I'd embarassed. I asked myself, "what do you want to say or do for this person?" I spoke to the person in my mind, felt what they felt, offered them consolation, comfort, and love. What's more, and an interesting point to make I believe, is that in talking to them in my mind I did not apologize. Apologizing would have been about me, and perhaps for me. What really healed this moment was to reach out to the other and be fully there for them, offering endless love and care and good wishes.

After spending a good deal of time with these thoughts and wishes, I returned to my normal breath meditation. I checked in with how I felt about myself and I found that the tightness, the anguish and the pain that had been there before was now replaced with warmth and gentleness.

Sometimes, in order to find self compassion and self forgiveness, we have to leave the self behind and reach further, reach way out, touch others, touch the world around us, so that we may come back to the self fuller, softer, melted, and purified.

Keep it simple

The dining room. From afar, it appears as though the windows here are in need of linen treatments! Hmm... what color should I choose? Minty sage, cream, or tope?

As a thank you for the delicious brownies, yesterday I made stawberry-papaya hot pepper jam and delivered jars to each of our neighbors. Along with loaves of freshly baked homemade bread.

{The fireplace in my study} I've decided to keep my decorating simple and clean for the first time in my life. The mirror above the mantel here was my grandmother's and is of course very special to me. Inside the glass jars are all of my little rocks and sea shell collections, neatly contained rather than spread around on shelves to collect dust as I've done in the past. I'd like simple black frames for these photographs on either side of the mirror. They're old finds from the CARE archive that neighbor Jenn brought home one day.

Come and give me your hand

My first new friend: a baby praying mantis. They're so elegant!

Our sweet little front porch coming together.

Naturally, this was the first room I unpacked and organized. My study and mediation area.

So far, both of our neighbors have come over to introduce themselves and welcome us to the neighborhood. I missed the couple who came over and brought us brownies yesterday. I came out on the porch for coffee this morning and spotted them on their porch. Of course, it didn't occur to me that I should wave and say hello until after I'd sat in the rocker with my back to them. The mornings are slow and hard on my brain. I hope they do not take it as a poor first impression of me.

I love our new home! It feels as though something big is changing. It feels as though it is whispering inspiration to me. Will my poetry come back? Will I grow more? In what ways will I grow?

Love the one you're with

 

I used this picture as the cover of my research presentation at our annual colloquium this year. It's a woman meditating under a bodhi tree. I love the colors, and the clay-like texture the painting portrays.

Today is my husband's birthday. We spent the greater part of the day packing and cleaning. I rented a carpet cleaner from Lowe's and steam-cleaned our antique rug. It was a proud, feminist moment for me learning how to use this large, complicated machine.

After our hard work we decided to treat ourselves to a slice at Savage pizza down the street. Savage is one of our favorites, with New York style pizza, excellent salads, and a really cool, kitchy atmosphere decked out with action figures. We were light-hearted and carefree as we sat down. Full on love, hungry for sustenance, happy to be in one another's company.

I recalled a strange thought I'd had earlier in the day, when I wished my love a happy birthday. I thought to myself that I should take a moment to truly appreciate his being alive and well. Death is always with us, just a heartbeat away. A moment's unchecked glance. The cliche blink-of-an-eye's distance.

I ordered a shrimp ceaser while my darling decided on a tomato and eggplant calzone. I drooled over knowing I'd be sneaking bites of his; by this point in our relationship he can be sure that I'll always go for a nibble of anything he orders (and will probably like it better!). It was just at that moment when we heard it:

A nauseating sound. The loud smack and thud of metal on metal, tires squeeling and shrieking. A car crash was happening, and we were sitting on the patio of Savage bearing witness. The sounds made us both cringe our shoulders together. But then, another, unexpected sound came. Another loud bang and thud, but it was not at all metal on metal and it was immediate. I felt my heart sink and my eyes well up. I turned my head to see a car, still skidding forward for what had been at least 75 feet, pushing the remnants of a motorcylce in its battered and charred grill.

Some things we don't hesitate on. I began to weap. My husband leapt from his chair, onto the table and over the railing of the patio, and took off towards the scene. A previously trained nurse reacts on instinct.

The other customers on the patio were all on their feet by this point, straining their necks to see over the parked cars. Where was the man on the motorcycle? I heard a guy say behind me, "dear god, please let it have been parked..." and another woman reply "no, it's lights are on." I didn't need to look to know. I was the only person not standing. I just sat with my eyes to the ground, feeling the raw grief of the moment.

It was a while before I spotted him coming back, walking slow and tired, as if he'd been through a fight. The ambulances had arrived. He was no longer needed. Was he ever needed?

There is something so admirable about him. It's in the way he carries himself -- with strength, composure, even a gentle quietness. We didn't speak about it right away. He sat back down. We looked at eachother quietly. Though I'm sure everyone around was chattering away about what had happened and would happen, everything around us and between us was silent. He finally asked me if I'd like to leave. I nodded and we boxed our untouched food.

I asked him to walk a different way home. I didn't want to see whatever it was that lay there in the street. So we took the long way, hand-in-hand, not saying a word.

Sometimes you just have to let the silence hang for a while, before you break it open. It was another thirty minutes before he could talk about what he'd seen when he left me on the patio. It was after our failed our attempts to eat at home, to keep packing, to watch a movie. It was after he smoked a cigarette and reminded himself outloud to breath. We just didn't know what to do with ourselves. We knew it couldn't be avoided, though the desire was there to push it all away. He had to talk it out of him, there was no other way.

The man's helmet had come off. The driver of the car was drunk. The bike had been hit, the man had been ejected from the bike and then run over by both his own bike and the drunk driver's car. When my husband reached the man, his face and skull were crushed and he was bleeding out. He checked for a pulse -- a light one still beat. He watched the man's stomach quiver the last moments of life.

The ambulances arrived and my husband left the man's side. He went to the side of the street to break up a fight that had broken out between one person and another who was filming the scene with his iphone, hoping to upload it to youtube. After subdueing these two, he went to gaurd the only cop, a woman, who was tending to the drunk driver. The driver was crying and praying.

So many lives changed in an instant. I weap for that.

I take a long moment tonight to appreciate my husband being alive and being well.

I don't understand the gauking, the exploitation, of tragic death for entertainment's sake. It's a horrific event that demands respect, silence, and deep reflection.

Love the ones you're with. Even if you don't know their names.

White Daisy Passing

The idea of moving is always exciting. I think it's the promise of change, as if uprooting can also somehow get us unstuck and shake us free. In previous years I became much more excited and hopeful about moves. These days the idea is more weighted. It's light as well as heavy. It's both promising and daunting. I enjoy throwing every last unecessary item away. It's a huge purging project of letters too long held onto, outworn clothes stripped, unremarkable books tossed from the shelf, and let's not forget the cluttered collection of "stocking stuffer" gifts that one holds onto out of loving obligation: the little fragrant oils, lotions, and odd presents like foot warmers and decorated birthday wine glass, or the miniture "fondu for two."  It makes me desperately wish "christmas" didn't exist.

All things go. All things grow.

The packing process gives ample time for reflecting on the years, the growth, the changes, the errors, the achievements. I think about how my writing has taken such a long hiatus. Poetry has been replaced by research. This isn't all bad -- though I do deeply miss and long for a connection with that ancient craft of divining words. I've grown tremendously in my ability to write a solid, clear thesis. I am learning how to express my more complex ideas and to convey them with precision and inner fervor.

Then there's the box of old pictures we come across. You know the one -- it still has the framed photos of him. I came across these and found myself pleased that I didn't feel an emotional tie any longer in the sense of remorse or regret or longing for the past. I appreciate how attractive of a couple we were -- very handsome indeed! I see how I really was someone else. Still myself, but somehow someone else. I like her. She's so different from the woman I see now. She was regal and full of grace and elegance. Quiet, introverted and introspect. Today she is very outward-turned, glowing, passionate, with a wide-open expression that takes in the world. She looks younger now, somehow. I think it has to do with the heart.

Do we throw away the pictures of them, too? Do we hold on to it? Is it disrespectful to our spouse? I can't bring myself to put it in the trash. That feels almost like throwing away a sacred relic. It's true the owners of these photographs are dead and gone, having become new and different people, but they are still honored in the heart, aren't they? Don't they still deserve a place on our private mantel?

I fall back in line

I've been away for too long. Learning hard lessons, writing good and important papers, and being ill for a three week stretch. So here are a few highlights from recent to bring the blog back up to date.

I've been pickling, and not pickling. Jamming and not jamming. Often I put peaches together in a bowl or fresh veggies with dill and seasoning, ready to boil for jarring. Half of my attempts have gone bad -- literally -- waiting for me to finish. One jar of pickled veggies made it. I'm thinking a bloody mary party might soon take place, garnished with these delights!

New plants for spring!

And putting all of my rock and sea shell collections into jars for the big move.... (everything apparently must go into a jar!)

A happy, recovered self packing up our sweet little home in Candler Park.

I have some words of wisdom to share soon regarding the many good and necessary lessons I've been learning on the path lately. Most of these lessons have been incredibly painful and difficult, but aren't the best ones always this way? When I find myself ready for real spirit growth, I call out to Kali and dare her to bring me the hardest of the hard obstacles. Smash my ego! Break it to pieces! Please! I know when I make this inner yell, this deep provocation, she will respond with ferocity. She cuts it to the quick. Pulls it all up from the roots! It's messy and shameful and gut-wrenching. It's ugly and smelly and gross and renders one totally naked and vulnerable. Just the right way to be most fully open for the big changes to happen inside!