At Our Fingertips

Being alive is our invitation to act in fresh, inventive ways. All it takes is concentrating on our inner vision in combination with external reality. The components for accomplishing any task are at our fingertips, awaiting discovery.


Our burdens are lightened when we understand that all situations are resolvable - no mystery need leave us in the dark for long. Just as surely as we each exist, so exists every element we need to solve any problem or chart any new course. 


- from *Mom's Meditation Book


Does this mean that recruiting a family member to walk the dog in the pouring rain this morning was as close as my fingertips? 


And no, I am not giving Chewy the finger. Pinky promise...


*The Promise of a New Day

Let Me Be Wise Enough

I am the expert on my own life. Today and every day let me be wise enough to consult with myself. 


- The Promise of a New Day


[ Mom's meditation book]

None Of Those Things

The word, retreat, sounds relaxing, doesn't it? It certainly can be. I've had some relaxing moments here, no one to tend to other than myself. No cooking, no cleaning, no feeding the cat. No bus stop in the morning with Claire. I mean, I've spent a week, writing, meditating, and spending time with other writers. How hard can that be? It feels absurd to say, this week has been a lot of work, but it's true. 


I'm shot. Whooped. Ready to go home, giddy about my own bed.


Here's a very short paper on what I learned on this retreat: 
Do the work. 
Relax. 
Be gentle with yourself.


Does it sound easy to you? It's not. I'm easily distracted; it's tough for me to settle down. This work can be funny, uncomfortable, light, squirmy, warm, deep, delightful, sad, lovely, scary, easy, dreamy, dopey, freeing, mysterious. 


And then, none of those things. 


You're tilting your head. 
What on earth is she talking about? 
I have no idea. 


Be gentle with yourself. 


*Read: Karme Choling

A Comforting Hand

Like roads and rivers and paths, I have always loved a good porch. It’s like the house, or place behind me, has my back, so I can sit in full openness to what’s in front of me. When I lean back, I lean in. Eyes open. Porches help me to expand and relax at the same time. Porches are places to sit and watch the world. 


A place to practice gathering yourself? 

Perhaps this is the message, the agenda-less agenda, of meditation. And this writing. The practice itself, whatever it may be, has my back. I can let my guard down when I feel this hand on my back. I can be gentle with myself. I can relax.


It's like my husband's hand, cupping my head; a comforting hand.

Simply Being Human

"Meditation is based on the premise that the natural state of mind is calm and clear. We must first slow down and experience our mind as it is. In the process, we get to know how our mind works. We see that wherever the mind is abiding - in anger, in desire, in jealousy, or in peace - that is where we are also abiding. We begin to see that we have a choice in the matter: we do not have to act at the whim of every thought. We can abide peacefully. Meditation is a way to slow down and see how our mind works. This has nothing to do with religion or a spiritual path. It has everything to do with simply being human."


- SAKYONG MIPHAM RINPOCHE


Day Three of my retreat: this is the Shambala Shrine room where we practice "simply being human".

Karme Choling

This is *Karme Choling, a Shambala Meditation Center surrounded by 700 acres of mountain forest in northern Vermont where I've come to spend a week deepening my writing practice and learning to meditate with the fine writer/teacher, Susan Piver. 


My journey from Pennsylvania began on Thursday afternoon with a stop-over in Portland, Connecticut where I spent the night with Nan, dear family friend, in her 19th century home. That night, I slept in Nan's girlhood bed, tossing and turning with anticipation and anxiety for the second leg of my trip on Friday. 


Hugs all around I headed north on 91 through Connecticut, Massachusetts, and into Vermont. The sky was clear but as I drove north the weather turned; rain blowing horizontally, winds pushing the car, road signs like scarified pavement, caution/ strong crosswinds ahead, ponding on highway. Ponding on highway?


I drove and breathed, ticking the miles off while listening to Garrison Keillor tell tales of Lake Wobegon. It's just rain, I told myself, followed by whose idea was this to leave my family for a week? Vision quest, my ass.


Finally, Exit 18, Barnet/Peacham. Off the exit, a half a mile up, I turned onto Patneaude Lane, crossed over a flooded bridge and drove up the dirt road. Dear God, what if I get trapped here?


Karme Choling rose up to greet me. I parked the car and promptly wept with relief, head on steering wheel. 


You can go home if you hate it.


By dinner I felt the shift, over the "new kid at camp" syndrome, I was laughing with new friends and settled into my room. Before bed, I stood outside under the night sky and thought, See? You can do this. Hell, you might even enjoy it.


"Mom! Dad and I are capable," Claire told me on the phone.


Me too.


(imagine a small tent over the "e" in Karme and the two dots over the "o" in Choling)

Deep Breath

Deep Breath

Deep Breath

Deep Breath

Rest

Deep Breath

Deep Breath

Rest

- from Be Generous by David Marell

Learn Ease

"Today I'll choose groundedness and freedom. I'll choose to learn ease...and slip myself off the hook where I stay hung up out of fear, fear of the unknown and perhaps fear of freedom."

- from Promise of a New Day (Mom's meditation book)

Only A Path

I am watching the baby turkeys stumble over the brush pile. The air is thick; heavy, buzzing with cicadas. A flying bug keeps banging its head on the window.

I do that.

This morning I opened Mom's meditation book to this:

Any path is only a path, and there is no affront, to oneself or others, in dropping it if that is what your heart tells you.

~ Carlos Castaneda

Thought: release yourself

Joy In The Doing

I like projects, especially ones that require old-fashioned physical labor; painting, hauling wood, stacking bricks? Besides getting things done, I end up with toned arms and a clear head, so I've concluded it's like going to the gym with a therapist, sorta.

This pretty pile of bricks originated from Main Street Jukebox, a local music store in downtown Stroudsburg that burned down a few years back. The buildings that caught on fire were old, and beautiful. The fire left a gaping hole in the center of Main Street.

Michael and I had the idea to add onto our brick patio out back. And build a labyrinth. So, we negotiated a price and ended up with a dump truck full of historic bricks in our front yard. We've been working our way through them ever since.

First, we tackled the labyrinth out front, cleaning bricks, then laying them in a spiral through a tall stand of pines. We didn't do it in one day. It took a while. But we got it done, one brick at a time.

It must've been the crisp air tonight that started us digging where we want to lay this next stack of bricks. Claire had the hoe, Michael was using a pick to loosen the soil, I filled the wheelbarrow with rocks. Claire was speaking all twangy like Michael's cousins from Louisville; we had a pretend farming moment. It was fun.

I used to feel a lot of frustration with projects that weren't finished around my house. But that's shifting. Now I'm seeing them as family time, or date night, or alone time; a meditation on life, asking each of us to simply do what's before us, and take joy in the doing.

Monday Meditation

“Wherever our attention is, that is where we are. Our attention, our awareness, breathes life into that which it rests upon. Place your attention on something, and it grows in your life. Take your attention away from something, and it fades away....Work, money, worry, shopping, exercise, lip balm, Twinkies - the list is endless. None of these items have power in themselves; their power is derived from the power of our attention.”

~ from Meditations from the Mat by Rolf Gates