The Comfort Of Stillness

photo by Dave Jackson



December 1. 2013

The still mind of the sage is a mirror of heaven and earth - the glass of all things.

- Chuang Tzu

In our own personal stillness, we find the solutions to the challenges facing us. We need to be willing to be quiet and turn our attention inward. No information we need eludes us for long when we dwell in the stillness.

Our opportunities for growth are hidden within the challenges that attract our attention. We need these if we are to contribute to the world. No challenge is beyond our capabilities or relative ease if we have sought the comfort of stillness.

I'll have the answers I need, when I need them, If I turn within for them.

~ from Mom's Meditation Book

As Close As Our Breath

November 28, 2013

Thanksgiving Prayer

We come to this table today, 

humble and thankful and glad.

We thank Thee first for the great miracle of life, 

for the exaltation of being human, for the capacity to love.

We thank Thee for joys both great and simple-

For wonder, dreams and hope;

For the newness of each day;

For laughter and song and a merry heart;

For compassion waiting within to be kindled;

For the forbearance of friends and the smile of a stranger;

For the arching of the earth and trees and heavens and the fruit of all three;

For the wisdom of the old;

For the courage of the young;

For the promise of the child;

For the strength that comes when needed;

For this family united here today.

Of those to whom much is given, much is required.  

May we and our children remember this.

Amen.

This prayer came to me from my mother many years ago. I read it aloud every year, always choking up at the end. There is something about the wisdom of the old, the promise of the child, the strength that comes when needed. Something about offering up thanks and remembering that we are all in this together. A prayer of thanks can be spoken, whispered, chanted, danced, written on the back of your grocery list every day of the year. To embrace every day with thanks-giving, even with rice cookers flying, or cancer, or loved ones no longer with us, yet are as close as our breath, this is a worthy path to walk.

love,

b xo

Rage Against The Rice Cooker

November 23, 2013

Dear Being-Alivers,

It's Saturday morning. I am in bed with a smattering of books, my notebook, wrapped in gray pilly sweater, a cup of hot tea on the bedside table. Out the window I see the rhodadendron bush, not frozenly pointing south, like closed umbrellas. This is a good sign. Praying the ground is still soft enough to plant daffodil bulbs with Elizabeth this afternoon.

*************************************************

What is it I want to say to you, to report? It's been weeks. I am full up with stories. Like most things in life, writing is a layered process. It takes time to get under the chatter and circling, to get to the heart of things, the underneath of things.

like in a conversation with your husband? 

My Wonder Woman Jesse, completed her final chemo last Wednesday. This is good news to report. And I realized with the finishing that I've barely written to myself or anyone else about this cancer journey. 

[Who came up with that one anyway?]

Journey? I prefer my soul-sister's assessment...

"It's a shit storm," Kerry said, "Call it like it is." 

This week Jess and I met with her doctor to talk about surgery. It was a good meeting, if you can have a good meeting about your kid having a double mastectomy. We were calm and asked questions. And then drove home. Jesse, as always, very calm.

Me too, until the next day, with no one in the house, a rage storm blew through me. I was screaming at the dog, throwing things out from the crowded pantry, a worn-out rice cooker, dried up magic markers, candle sticks from my first marriage, scanning the joint for what I could burn. You know I love a good burn.

"I went a little crazy," I said to Ann on the phone.
"Think about it. The meeting with the doctor."

oh. 

So, underneath the rage against the rice cooker was sadness and worry. Tearing through the pantry and screaming was actually appropriate behavior. Some days my yoga mat doesn't cut it, or walking, or reading another meditation about being grateful and trusting. It makes me want to spit. Getting that was the gift.

Spit if you need to. Let it rip.

And then I saw the turkeys out the window, my beloved turkeys. Even with the dog whining and pining to go outside, the morning rage slid out of me, like feathers falling. I watched them meander past the wood pile, pecking the ground, hanging out together, 

a cloud of turkeys. 

Falling Back

Falling back an hour brought a morning of light for us. 
Everyone seemed more up in the house at six-thirty, myself included. Although Claire was somewhat troubled that with this new morning light, everyone could see her at the bus stop [and me too.] 

Most mornings I'm rocking that 

just crawled out of a tent look. 

no photo available. 

Elizabeth said, " Bean, I'll give you a Snicker bar if you'll drive me to school,

I said thanks but no thanks to the Snickers [highly suspectl behavior] 

just say no

but yes to driving her.  

It was a gorgeous ride, 
country roads with swirling 
gold-yellow leaves floating down. 
It was a Wow-ride.

Never lose an opportunity of seeing 
anything beautiful, for beauty is God's handwriting.

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Thanks, Ralph. 

*

Following up on what I'm dubbing 

The Delightful Project

is another short story about the word,

delightful,

and how it keeps popping up ~

My friend, Naomi, has a four year old son, Mason. Mason woke up very early on Saturday morning after a raucous night with his not-going-to-bed cousin, Magnolia. 

[sister's name, Violet. I'm detecting a theme...]

Giving Mason his morning hug, Naomi asked,

How are you, buddy? 

















Mason said, I'm delightful,Mommy. 

Naomi doesn't know where he heard that word or why it came to him like that, out of the blue, but that's a big 3 in one week

+ all the other I'm delightfuls 

I keep saying while 
driving my car
walking the dog
emptying the dishwasher 
freaking out
brushing my teeth that can be a little messy, but try it.

xo b

But That They Build Nests In Your Hair

This week I've heard two different people say

I'm delightful

after being asked the standard question -

How are you?


















One was Anne who was working at Target.
I asked, How are you?
She replied, I'm delightful.
I asked, How is it that you're so certain like that?

Anne said, 
I choose it.
I get up every morning 
and choose to be positive, 
I choose to spread joy.

I can't stop thinking about Anne and her delightful-ness. 

Yesterday, at the market, buying raisins and chunky peanut butter, yogurt and celery + a few other things, I heard the young man behind me in line being asked by Kathy, my favorite cashier,

How are you?

He said, I'm delightful. [who are these people?]

Did you just say you were delightful?

















Yup, he said, I'm delightful.

No kidding, you're the second person in two days who has said they were DELIGHTFUL and I just find it...

A sign? the young man said. 

He had a very big grin and he was delightful. I wanted to take his picture but decided to simply savor the moment and carry on with the day. 

His sunny self reminded me of my orange tomatoes.

"That the birds of worry and care fly above your head, this you cannot change. But that they build nests in your hair, this you can prevent." 

- Chinese proverb

Anne of Target (Tar-je') and the young man at the market may not have heard about birds of worry, and if they have, they are clearly not letting them nest in their hair. 

So, I'm thinking if I say *I'm delightful,











[even if I have the perfect head for worry birds to build a nest]

I'll become delightful ~

*Even though I honestly don't feel delightful, I'm going to give this a whirl. Experiment with delightfulness. Say it when people ask me, how are you? Let me know if you try it too.

This Not So Spiritual Thought

I had this not so spiritual thought after dropping Claire off at her middle school, too many yellow buses and streams of kids and my kid taking a deep breath before stepping out into the kid-stream, 

After I said, 

don't let the bastards get you down, honey

mommy's little mantra

After driving back home past the old man lumbering into the laundry mat, thinking how un-shiny this town has gotten, really run-down in spots and kinda sad,

and the thought that occasionally sweeps over me,

I gotta get out of here

After that, I had this not so spiritual thought 

waiting for the light to turn green 

that Oprah, after enjoying a meal of fresh organic vegetables from her Maui garden, lovingly prepared by her personal chef, finds herself in the pantry frantically pulling out a big bag of Ruffles potato chips and starts shoving handfuls into her mouth while the sun sets over the Pacific Ocean.

  

Sweet Lizard Brain

There are no pre-requisites to being worthy. 

- Brene Brown 

I love that. It cracks open my messier places, the whole who do you think you are voice that shows up especially when I feel myself leaning into my writing or

my life as it is in this moment regardless of 

work 

bank account

age

____________(fill in the blank)

or the when are you going to get it together voice lurking in the wings to pounce when my small mind starts taking inventory on all the things that seem terribly wrong.

Cheri Huber, Buddhist meditation teacher has a wonderful line:

there's nothing wrong with you

Then she takes it a step further, chuckling when she says it because she says, people just can't handle this one... She says, 

there's nothing wrong. period.

small mind will argue on this one, 

sputtering and poking its finger in your face but that's what it does, 

sweet old lizard brain.

It's just trying to protect us from Woolly Mammoths.

Even full of doubt over pretty much everything these days, I'm whispering these mantras from Brene, Cheri, and the one I began this blog with -  

trust my path unflinching 

even when I can't see the path.

There are no prerequisites to this being alive. 

Stand for yourself today.

Practice kindness wherever you go.

Breathe in the ordinary moment.

xo

b