Monthly Archives: June 2012

Jun29

Breathe In, Breathe Out

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Yesterday, after a 5am yoga session filled with focus, music and stretching, and then after hauling 12 more large bags filled with donated items out to the curb for pickup by the Epilepsy Foundation truck, tossing a few containers into the dumpster, and then moving other boxes of “keeper” items (like photo albums) out of the three rooms that are being emptied and prepped for a rental apartment, I was still dressed in my yoga gear, sweaty and rushed, as I printed out a paper I had promised to prepare.

Not surprisingly, I arrived late at the door to the church, but found it locked. Oops. Was I so late that I’d missed my meeting? I called Rebecca, who was on the same frenetic schedule as me, though for other reasons.

Thankfully, I have yoga instructions running through my head, clearing away some of the noise and tension. My friend Miri invited me to resume 5am kundalini yoga every day with her. Before the sun rises, we participate in a morning spiritual and physical ritual — a sadhana — to prepare ourselves for each day. It’s taught by Ingrid. Showing up every morning, even when I want to stay in bed, comfortably sprawled under the blankets, is possibly the wisest decision I make each day.

Breathe in, breathe out, let it go.

There I was, catching my breath at a locked door. Standing outside the church. Late. Distracted.

A few minutes later, Rebecca and I connected. She’s advising me as I start another part of the process that parallels my entry into graduate school. Along with seeking a Masters degree, I am also starting the path to request being taken “in care” by my home church and the governing area conference as I work toward ordination through the UCC (United Church of Christ, the protestant denomination to which I have belonged for almost 20 years).

Rebecca and I sat in her office and reviewed a paper I had drafted. Discussed next steps.

Then went into the sanctuary to pray. Yet my brain and heart were filled with noise. It all seems so surreal. And I have good reasons to be concerned. Plenty of obstacles that can easily clutter up my mind, and distract me.

Breathe in, breathe out, let it go.

The whirl of worry goes something like this. Returning to college … graduate school … earning a degree as I turn 50 years old. Pursuing a shift in vocations, when we’re stressed out about how to pay for college at all, since both Sarah and I will be enrolled at the same time, and changes to family income are alarming. Juggling part-time work and full-time classes. Learning a new language. Entering an academic community among many younger students … I’m actually the age of faculty as opposed to many of my incoming peers. Parenting Sarah from a distance, as she heads out to college and adulthood at the end of the summer. Commuting to Boston and Cambridge, places that Chris and I lived almost two decades ago, and where I have only been a tourist more recently. Connecting with Chris this autumn in the midst of the rush and bustle of conflicting schedules, at a time when our lives might once have grown more simple, but will now be more complex instead, and as we approach a crossroads and need to pay attention to whom we are as a married couple without a child living at home. Surreal. All of it.

Breathe in, breathe out, let it go.

After clearing away the fuss and noise in my head, I connect with deeper awareness. Going back to school? Going in this new direction?

I feel as if someone has lit a fire inside me. My mind and heart start to open up with questions and ideas, or just the promise of them. I’ll study and learn from other people, coming from many faiths, traditions and nations, and come away with many new experiences and understandings. The next few years may help make sense of the past forty-odd ones. Integrate so many past experiences, and allow them to take on new meaning, as they inform what comes next. As I answer a call.

Breathe in, breathe out, let it go.

Right now, the process starts by signing the forms for college loans, making appointments with church committees, and figuring out how I’ll get back and forth to the city as efficiently as possible. By finishing this paper I’m working on with Rebecca.

Wait. Those actions are more logistics. Stuff. Details. Clutter.

Breathe in, breathe out, let it go.

I try again to return to the real motivation. This process also begins with the fire inside. With the hope and light that kindles when I imagine myself in Cambridge on campus.

And with the grins and nods that I see reflected in my family and friends when I tell them what I’m doing. Or as Chris says, for anyone who knows me, this seems obvious. “Well, yeah! D’uh.”

So why didn’t I realize and say yes to this idea sooner? Why am I surprised by what everyone else already seems to see as a path that is open in front of me? Sometimes I have to be hit over the head by life, I guess.

Breathe in, breathe out, let it go.

More immediately, this process starts with the prayer in the sanctuary, yesterday morning. I had dust and dirt under my fingernails from cleaning and hauling. I was in a t-shirt tossed over a sports bra and black yoga pants, hoping I was only mildly stinky from perspiring as I worked in the house. And my brain was already galloping down the road, thinking about how to edit the paper, and the research I wanted to do, hunting for a specific hymn from Taize that I used to sing as a teen, and …

Breathe in, breathe out, let it go.

I barely focused enough to stay present in the sanctuary with Rebecca. I filled quiet moments with chatter. Giggled. Giggled?! Me? Like a skittish adolescent girl!

Breathe in, breathe out, let it go

Then we walked to the front of the sanctuary. Lit candles. Opened the hymnal. And I tried to be focused. To pay attention to a moment that is meant to bless this journey I’m taking. To honor this time that Rebecca had set aside for the two of us.  To invoke the presence of the Creator.

Yet I couldn’t be calm and present inside that moment. I kept slipping away.

Breathe in, breathe out, let it go.

Know what? I realized I didn’t have to be anyone else. Or be anywhere else. I could be exactly who I was at that moment. Right there. Because wherever I went, the One to whom I prayed would be with me. And see me as I really am. As giddy and unprepared and overwhelmed and excited and informal and sad and worried and hopeful as I was right then.

So here’s the prayer I managed to squeeze out, while Rebecca – my minister, mentor and friend – held my hands in the silence of First Church’s sanctuary. I’m paraphrasing, but it was something like, “God? Here I am. Sweaty from work, distracted by so many things, imperfect, but coming to you like this, as I am. Please be with me. Help me be present and go where this journey takes me. Thank you.”

And as it turns out, I’d been praying all along. All morning. All week. Over and over, as I inhaled and exhaled, and whispered chants from the morning’s kundalini routine.

Because the yoga every morning? The daily ritual? “What is sadhana? It’s a committed prayer,” says the first teacher of kundalini yoga, Yogi Bhajan.

Breathe in, breathe out, let it go.

 

Jun27

Vision Board

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Among the many treasures that awaited discovery as I emptied three rooms over the past two days? Images drawn by both of the girls. Their words. Photos and awards. Discarded homework. Storybooks.

As for Chris and I? Our wedding album. More photos of us as a young couple. Mementos from birthdays in a different house in a different decade. Textbooks and roadmaps. ID cards from our roles as guardians in the hospital, paperwork from different jobs (for me anyway), plastic membership cards for shops and services that are defunct, certifications from Rotary over the past few years, and so many other odds and ends.

Quite revealing was the personal Vision Board that I found. I made it. It was created during a workshop led by Lauren DiBiase a few years ago.

You know what a Vision Board is, yes? It’s a poster board or sheet of paper on which you paste images of what you hope and desire for yourself. It can be created with pictures of objects that represent the lifestyle you hope to live (houses, boats, cars, stacks of money), or it could be self-images (activities like cycling or kayaking, silhouettes, healthy food, closeups of body parts, fitness gear) or spiritual symbols (ocean, forest, stones, desert, sky, fire), or educational representations (language, books, tools) or image of destinations (maps, special landmarks, transportation like ships or planes) and whatever else  you wish to set as goals for yourself.

Then, presumably, you hang it up somewhere useful, as a reminder of your target – your vision – for your own life. It’s an incentive. An in-your-face prompt to aim for what you desire.

As my husband Chris says to our daughter Sarah, “Every decision brings you further or closer to where you want to be.”

The funny thing about my Vision Board? It’s full of words, not pictures.

Not surprising, in many ways. Yes, I’m a visual person. I paint and sketch. Essentially, I’m also a word person. I read and write insatiably.

During Lauren’s workshop a few years ago, once I starting finding phrases and words that spoke to me, clipped from magazines, I glued together a very large composition: a wish list and extensive imagined biography on the board. It took shape as language, instead of a pictorial snapshot. Yet it embodied what I aimed to achieve in my future.

Happily, her workshop isn’t about judging or editing. There aren’t any rules, except to fill the page if possible. To learn about yourself, through the process of seeing what images (or words, as in my case) call to you, and wind up on your Vision Board. No one advised me to limit myself to pictures and leave off the words. Or to re-do my composition.

Ironically, until this week, I had that Vision Board safely tucked away in an envelope. For years. It wasn’t hanging up where it would be visible all the time. Huh.

When I put it aside, hidden from view, was I ignoring my own wishes? Or was the exercise of naming and acknowledging my own wishes sufficient? Can I believe that I have acted on them ever since, regardless of whether I had the Vision Board to inspire me? Perhaps.

Well, the answer probably depends on what I see now on the board, and compare it to where I am in my life. How much of what I pasted on that board is now present in my life?

Lots. Some of those expectations for myself come and go. For instance, I’ve resumed the daily morning yoga routine with my teacher Ingrid, so I’m feeling good about self-care (two days after starting the sessions, I’m virtuous, don’t you think?). Attending graduate school wasn’t on this board, and yet it fulfills many parts of what I pasted there. Relationships? I am deeply connected to my family and friends, and we are always a work in progress, don’t you think?

Maybe I’ve let go of other desires. Or come to a more balanced place in connection with them.

The Vision Board is a touchstone. It’s a snapshot, a way to measure where I was, and the distance I have traveled.

It’s okay if some of the things on that board aren’t what I’d wish for now. And it’s great that there are things I’d paste onto a Vision Board now, that I didn’t imagine for myself a few years ago.

The other items I found as I cleared the rooms … an unfinished story by Jessie, a game board invented by Sarah, a textbook from Chris’s college days, a thesaurus I received for my own high school graduation,  a rubbing of our family’s handprints and our dog’s footprints cast into concrete in our former driveway … are also touchstones. We all have them.

Our lives are mostly moments lived in transition, between stepping stone and stepping stone, as we respond to one experience, shift balance and then move toward the next. The Vision Board, and all of those other artifacts I discovered in the past few days? Each one is like a stepping stone where we once paused. Either I, or some other member of my family left a footprint behind – an impression with toes pointed in the direction where each of us expected to go – heel already lifted and the ball of the foot dug deep as we each leapt toward the next point.

Now I’m landing on the next stone, and the next, leaving more tracks along the way.

Jun26

Another Round of Letting Go

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I return often to the theme of letting go. It has been an action at my fingertips again for the past week.

For instance, I was one of many friends who helped our pal Aileen box up her personal belongings and sort through 9 years of accumulated items before movers arrived at her door last week. She shed a whole lot of stuff, and yet there was an amazing amount that remained to be moved.

Of course, as anyone who has lived in the same location for extended periods of time knows, it’s easy to acquire a lot of things. And harder to get rid of it, or pare it down, than you’d guess.

I even sat with Aileen during the closing on her house. Attorneys guided a pair of new homebuyers as they signed papers. Of course, Aileen signed her share, too. She sold her Ipswich home in order to start the next adventure in her life: graduate school in San Francisco.

Now, in many ways, she’s liberated! She’s moving across the country with a much lighter load, and starting over in every way imaginable. New place to live, new vocation, new community …

That’s both exhilarating and incredibly stressful. I’ve witnessed her courage as she  endures the struggle to balance all the tensions and anxieties with the jubilation and anticipation of this new change in her life.

Meanwhile, Chris and I are trying to empty out three rooms in our house. To a great extent, much of what’s been present in those rooms must exit the house: donated, recycled or discarded. Some of it, unfortunately, will be packed and stored … and I have to ask myself, honestly, if I’ll ever open those boxes again and make use of what I find inside.

Although time passes, and what seemed important enough to save – a while ago — becomes distant enough to set free. This has happened a lot recently as I assess the things I discover in closets and drawers as I have cleared out rooms. I have emptied pockets and bags, old purses and random containers. Plenty of it is easy to set aside: it’s old, out of date, irrelevant, doesn’t fit, or simply hasn’t been used in a long time. I can justify putting those items into a donation category.

Sometimes, I come across the girls hidden treasures in funny places. They turn up as I sort.

And once upon a time, I would have clung to those little caches, as clues to how they each thought when they were little … stashes of plastic animals or foreign coins, toy cell phones and pretend lip gloss, real thermometers and worn decks of cards.

Sometimes we held onto things for years, as Sarah and then Jessie entered in-between phases, and occasionally (rarely) wanted to revisit their own old treasures and childhood playmates. I kept favorite games and stuffed animals long after they’d been handled and played with. Only once they’ve been left behind for months and years, did I dare to put them into the hands of another child.

Of course, many of Jessie’s stashes turn up, and there’s no one here to play with them anymore. I’ve even kept them, and brought them out when other kids visit, just in case they’re still worth playing … but different ages, genders and interests … most of those well-loved or hardly-used games and toys have outgrown their purpose in our house.

And so, I am setting free much of my girls’ childhood. It’s not easy, as you can imagine. Many artifacts hold our memories of playing alongside them. And though I have talked about the weight of holding onto such objects, and the futility of endowing them with more emotional energy, it is an exercise in commitment and determination to put them into the “must go” pile.

Below are just some of the items that I continue to find and sort into “let go” piles. I’m really not holding onto very much. It has taken years to be able to say that, and believe it to be true, and yet I will find safe corners to keep some of it anyway.

  • Purses (Jessie and Sarah both had countless bags full of lip balm, Kleenex, coins and other belongings).
  • Kits full of “medical play” gear (Jessie worked through many scenarios by being the doctor, and having one of us roleplay as the parent of an injured stuffed animal or babydoll who became a mischievous pediatric character that behaved naughtily enough to make her laugh hysterically).
  • Game boards (hours of Monopoly at the dinner table).
  • Books (Harry Potter or Among the Hidden series by Margaret Peterson Haddix for Sarah as a younger reader and the Biscuit series or the Ghosthunters series by Cornelia Funke for Jessie).
  • DVDs (Disney, Disney, Disney).
  • Dress up clothes (princesses, mermaids, and lots of animal character accouterments, too).
  • Floppy animals (Webkinz, Beanie Babies and many others).

Many of these remembrances of their childhood are being donated, again, as curbside contributions for the Epilepsy Foundation and Big Brother Big Sister. I can bundle them up, if I believe they will have another use, and another life, somewhere else.

Some of the memories, and the mementos, will stay with us a while longer.

Jun25

Homecoming Tastes Like Ice Cream

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We’ve had several departures and returns. More are coming over the next few months. This weekend, Sarah and Chris came home from a week in New York City.

After one night’s sleep, our youth group spoke in church about their personal reflections regarding community service in Staten Island. One of the speakers was Sarah. For several days, they had all worked in a food pantry and served dinner to people struggling with AIDS, HIV and homelessness. This morning, now that they’re back in Ipswich, they told our congregation about last week.

They shared stories about personalities. Tony who helps manage the kitchen, and doesn’t think that girls can lift as much as boys, so he assigns “guy work” and “girl work” according to his ideas of gender roles, but let go of his own rules when he fixed up his sister’s hair as she struggled with cancer. A little girl at dinner who didn’t seem to understand the rules of the card game “I Doubt It” until she made another player (one of the kids from Ipswich) pick up a large hand of discarded cards when he bluffed; she enjoyed the sensation of learning a new game, being a regular kid for a little bit, and winning. A man in the park told them to cherish their families and be sure to tell them they were loved; it hit home with one of the girls on the trip who had left angry at a parent.

Our youth group members talked about men and women who had lost almost everything, and then found their way back to sobriety and helping others. They talked about a pick-up game of soccer. Ferry rides. 5-minute showers. Cartons of donated vegetables and iced tea. They talked about adults and children, living with few resources, who found hope in a hot meal or a basket of groceries and toiletries.

They learned about people like and unlike themselves. They witnessed the dignity and love  in the communities where they worked, and the connections made across all sorts of barriers and boundaries.

During their week, they reported squalls and floods in New York. They talked about it all. Bad weather. Rainbows. Covenants. Hope.

Especially because of the hot temperatures and sudden rainshowers, one of the metaphors that stayed with the members of the youth group was the imagery of storms. They studied storms each night in biblical passages. Then translated the metaphor of elemental weather into their own sharing with each other.

They recognized that every person endures internal storms. Tempests aren’t isolated to the people they were helping. Storms happen to the members of their own group, too. During conversations, they were challenged to name their own storms.

At the center of a storm? The promise of its calm eye. And maybe a scoop of coconut-flavored ice cream. With toppings.

Our youth group members gave examples about what serves as the source of peace and stability – the calm eye – in their own personal storms. Friends. Faith. Love of family. Music. New experiences.

And so I thought about our own family. Assuredly, we’re always in flux, and there’s usually a rising tide or hovering cloud or howling wind in the distance. That’s just life, isn’t it?

Part of the calm eye in any family tempest is connecting with each other. Reinforcing emotional intimacy, through conversation and time together, gives us equilibrium. Yet in the midst of wild fluctuations in weather and mood, it’s not always so easy to do.

So we hold onto moments like this one. Today Sarah invited us all out for ice cream. We mixed flavors and toppings, experimented and sated ourselves. Laughed with each other. Talked. Tasted each others’ concoctions. Remembered family stories. Ate too much and wanted naps afterward.

Metaphorically, since we’re in the midst of transition, there is plenty of pelting rain and wild wind whipping all around us. The same is true for any individual or family. It’s out there, always, for all of us.

But as the youth group reminded me, and as Sarah emphasized in her desire to find family time, we can also recognize and sit together inside the eye of the storm. At least for a little while. Connected. Reaching toward each other.

Eating ice cream.

Jun24

Is My CSA a Sacred Place?

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What defines a sacred place?

Is it somewhere like Lourdes, France where miracles happened according to the Christian tradition? Maybe the Mahabodhi Tree in Bodh Gaya, India where Prince Siddhartha took rest and experienced enlightenment per Buddhist tradition? Perhaps  Crater Lake, Oregon which is sacred to the Native American Klamath people?

All of them are sacred, of course, in different cultures and faiths.

But why? Interestingly, although Europe is anecdotally going through what is called a “secular” period in its history, major religious sites are bursting with visitors. According to Professor Harvey Cox who spoke in Ipswich tonight, many of these visitors don’t attend church or temple at home, but are called to pilgrimage sites because they feel something special happens there. They want to be connected to spirituality, even if they don’t connect with a more organized practice of religion.

I ask this question about what constitutes a sacred placed, because today our Rotary club hosted a run and walk through Appleton Farms, the oldest continuously working farm in the United States. It is held in care by the Trustees of Reservations. Acres upon acres of pasture and woodlands are open for daily walks, including jaunts with dogs in some areas, as well as equestrian activity. Since it’s a working farm, cows and other livestock graze in the landscape, and barns surrounded by fields mark hubs of agricultural activity (dairy, community sustained agriculture/CSA, etc).

So why is such a place mentioned in a conversation about sacred places? Because another Rotarian named Nat spent time out there with me today, as we worked the race route in the woods, and we gazed off at its vistas.

Nat called it a sacred place. Asked me if I agreed.

Upon reflection, I realized that I’d experienced some sacred moments at Appleton Farms. Picking strawberries and sunflowers in the CSA fields with Sarah and Jessie. Stomping along muddy tracks with dogs and friends. Pausing at one of the Pinnacles at the edge of the woods with Chris.

Yes, it’s sacred.

We all have places that aren’t famed pilgrimage tourist spots, but locations that are special to us individually, because we have had personal, spiritual, revelatory or insightful times there.

So I agreed with Nat. Yes, it’s sacred.

I have other such sacred places, and I’m sure you do, too. For me, they include the shore and dunes of Crane Beach. A stone in the cemetery. The rose window of a church in Ohio. A birthing room at the North Shore Birth Center in Beverly.

Sometimes we bring back keepsakes from places that carry such significance. A smooth stone, a bottle of sand, a pinecone or blossom. (That’s a little different than spoons or shotglasses collected from all over the world, although I don’t discount the sacred qualities of pubs and cafes all over the globe.)

When Jessie was ill, travelers brought us many mementoes, including symbols from places like Medjugorje, as well as sacred objects such as a handmade Native American prayer wheel or a strand Tibetan prayer flags.

So Lourdes or Appleton Farms, Mt. Sinai or Crater Lake? All are sacred. Some are closer than others, and we may experience more such significant moments at those places we can easily reach. Others must be attained via pilgrimage, and the journey itself is part of the process that makes a destination sacred.

And sometimes the sacred place follows us, wherever we are. We carry the possibility of insight and revelation inside us.

 

 

Jun23

Like

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First Church youth group in Staten Island

Chris and Sarah are coming home on Saturday. Chris says they bring back many lessons, many stories.

These stories probably won’t be shared in one quick rush, but told in bite-sized, palm-sized snacks: small anecdotes and flashbacks. Also as a compilation of images. And we’ll hear reflections by the youth group at a worship service.

Each participant will come back with a unique series of memories and insights. It’s similar to when people witness an event, and are later interviewed to gather information. Sometimes they have conflicting descriptions of the characters and actions that took place. Overlapping and different perspectives. Partial recollections.

You’d have to interview everyone on the trip to gain a comprehensive idea of what Staten Island has meant to the youth and adults. And yet, all those words cannot touch reality, can they? Only immersion into the environment itself, and having been connected to it — feeling it  in skin and soul — could truly transmit the full impact of their experiences.

Yet we cannot all experience each others’ journeys. So we tell stories. It’s how we connect.

In the poem Liketown, Chuck Rybak challenged the word like itself. And perhaps the poet calls us to be real … just to be, rather than to be our own stories.

Liketown (excerpt)

Because it’s something in the water,
she says
I’m, like, so sick.
Because he’s scavenged the last
of his barren-cupboard dreams
He’s like, so hungry …

… you’re not like bored,
you are bored—you’re not like so pissed,
you are so pissed.
You’re not a simile for your own life—
you are your own life.

I would debate this with the poet. We are both simile and self.  We are our own stories as well being as our own living, breathing individuals.

Language and stories have their place. They give us power and voice. They educate and express. They communicate and connect.

I’m looking forward to my family’s return. I want to touch and welcome home the real people: my husband and daughter in the flesh.

Yet I also crave their stories … their abstraction of their time apart, and everything they can share about it, so it feels immediate and tangible and meaningful to me, too. Even though I wasn’t with them, they’ll color their tales with the week’s plots and dramas.

The places and people with whom they interacted all returned home with them. They are changed. They tell new tales. They feel a little different inside their own skins.

Yes, we are both. We are ourselves, and our stories about ourselves.

Jun22

YOLO

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YOLO. It means, “You Only Live Once.”

Okay, Rev. Rebecca Pugh has preached a sermon about this acronym, when the youth group introduced it to her. I have also seen it “tagged” (aka, spray-painted as graffiti art) on the sidewalk in front of the high school (I think by mischievous members of the graduating 2012 senior class). And it’s common terminology in texting or messaging or emails (emails are an old-fashioned way to communicate with the younger generation, by the way).

Image Source: Brittany Robertson via Pinterest

It’s another way of saying that life is brief, life is now, and you should seize the moment.

In some ways, it’s a belief that I already embrace. Don’t put off everything until tomorrow, or assume you can catch up later … if you have wishes and dreams and passions, follow them sooner. In the present.

None of us can be certain about how long our lives will span. Much of what we do is accumulated within the small daily interactions we share right now … we’re making a difference as we go.

Making a difference should be extended to others, but ideally includes keeping some promises to ourselves, too. Filling our own present with quality of life … with meaningful and moving experiences.

Of course, I don’t actually believe we only live once. Maybe it depends on your definition of life, but I’m pretty open-minded about this whole concept.

As I’ve mentioned before, Jessie seems to visit from time to time. And of course, my faith holds out the promise of a life beyond this one.

Plus, there are other belief systems held by my friends that include the idea of past lives and future lives, reincarnation, karma, the presence of ancestors, the potential of future generations, and so many other aspects of our spiritual journeys … embodied within centuries of philosophy, religious practice and even anecdotal accounts.

I don’t discount other traditions. Some are much older than my own, and have much to say to me. Others are younger, and also offer insights that I find valuable.

I don’t claim to know a whole lot about how the world works, or even how much we can perceive and understand. I also love the philosophy of Christian physicists, for instance, some of whom postulate that our Creator occupies dimensions we cannot perceive, so we only have a partial interaction or explanation of the idea of God.

Well, that makes sense. Yahweh is Yahweh. We are humans. How can we comprehend, or even put into words, all that means?

To some extent, I think all belief systems have information to impart, lessons to teach, and a meaningful context that explains at least some aspects of our young and fleeting mortal experience of an ancient and changing world. None of these systems, Christianity included, can ever answer all our questions.

I think we’ll find out a whole lot more, and be connected to a greater Being and perhaps a greater community of spirits or souls, when we pass beyond our human bounds.

Meanwhile, YOLO. It has its place in the way we live our lives.

Chris reports from Staten Island, where he and Sarah and other adult chaperones and teen members of First Church’s youth group are racking up good karma (there’s a concept borrowed from another faith): “Hard work. Exhausting. Good work. Good people. Great kids. Many lessons. Many stories.”

YOLO. Make every day count. Be passionate now, here, in this moment. You can’t be sure how many hours, days or years await you. Don’t assume there are chances for do-overs; just do whatever it is you’re going to do as messily and boldly and tenderly, as often as possible, the first time around.

YOLO. From my perspective, this can also mean having the courage to believe that there’s a future for you. Choosing a path that can lead toward your long-term goals, and building toward your dreams for this life.

It’s okay to hope for all of it: frisson now, fulfillment later.

Jun21

Kay Ryan’s Glittering Fan of Time

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This week has been all about catching up. With the house. With myself.

As anyone following this journal knows, the past several weeks were a major push toward a series of events: graduation, end-of-school activities, out-of-state guests, construction inside the house, and the Coast of Hope bike ride. In her poem The Edges of Time, the US Poet Laureate Kay Ryan called those sorts of demands:

“A glittering fan of things
competing to happen”

While Chris and Sarah are volunteering with the youth group at Staten Island, I’ve kept moving (for the most part). I attempt to clean up the house and yard (with help, by the way). Discard and recycle. Sort supplies. Donate perishable items. Put away inventory from this year’s bike ride, for use next year. Continue to organize stacks of family belongings inside the house, that must either be given away, stored or assigned to new location for daily use. Approach the ability to empty three rooms, so they’ll be liveable for our anticipated tenant in a few weeks. Again, from Kay Ryan’s poem The Edges of Time, I’m responding to what she calls:

“A humming begins,
apparently coming
from stacks of
put-off things or
just in back. A
racket of claims”

Along the way, it’s also an opportunity to take stock of myself, too, personally.

I’ve spent time with my counselor, exploring the highs and lows of this week. Talking about relationships with Chris and Sarah. Discussing grief for Jess. Assessing self-image and new vocational directions.

Working with a counselor that I trust is an imperative form of self-care. Originally I didn’t use this resource for the first few years after our life with cancer abruptly ended. Our entire family has learned to value therapeutic relationships, although we aren’t all consistent about maintaining them.

Of course, I also indulged in a little girls-week-at-home stay-cation behavior (pizza, movies, pajamas). Visited with friends. Been alone a lot. Written. Read. Walked. Thought.

And I returned to work. I’m tackling assignments for clients. Drumming up new freelance projects: website design and business writing. Preparing for graduate school.

Phew. The last few months’ adrenalin-rush of time, leading up to all those events, was exciting and focused in its way. Like proceeding, always, at a full gallop.

Now I’m grateful for the chance to slow down, though I keep moving. Taking inventory. Getting back in touch with fundamental conditions: how the family is doing, how the house is changing, and my own state of being.

As I write, I realize that the week is slipping away. That this gift of time, this chance to pay attention and catch up, is unwinding. My family returns on Saturday. Life takes on more complex rhythms. The bubble of time in isolation, which I have begun to use to restore some internal and external order and to reflect, is coming to a close.

I’ll share Poet Laureate of the United States, Kay Ryan’s reflection on her poem The Edges of Time. “What got me thinking about the subject of time was my habit … of suddenly having to do all kinds of things just when it was time for us to walk out the door to go someplace. Carol would stand there, keys in hand … Couldn’t I have done it earlier? No! I was stirred to action by not having time, by time’s diminishment or thinning. … a poem that I can now easily read as a meditation on the approach of death  … was written to explain why I couldn’t get out the front door.” This reflection by the poet is excerpted from The Washington Post.

THE EDGES OF TIME
by Kay Ryan

It is at the edges
that time thins.
Time which had been
dense and viscous
as amber suspending
intentions like bees
unseizes them. A
humming begins,
apparently coming
from stacks of
put-off things or
just in back. A
racket of claims now,
as time flattens. A
glittering fan of things
competing to happen,
brilliant and urgent
as fish when seas
retreat.

Jun20

Heat and Help

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It slows us down, this combination of humidity and elevated temperatures. We plan to be indoors with air conditioning or insulation, or close to someplace otherwise refreshing (water of all kinds, like rives and bridges and pools and even showers), if possible. Yet it’s beautiful outside in so many other ways: still and sunny, bright and inviting.

The international service organization to which Chris, Sarah and I all belong – Rotary – has a local chapter. It’s the Ipswich Rotary Club to which I belong, because its goal is humanitarian service projects and international relationship-building, person by person. (Some people mistake its purpose for one of business-to-business marketing, like a Chamber of Commerce, but although the club has an amusing social component, we actually don’t talk about business at our gatherings … we focus on ways to help people locally, nationally and globally.)

One of our local Ipswich initiatives is to help our community’s seniors. They can call or sign up through the Council on Aging  at 978-356-6650, and request help with small projects around the house. If our Club can help, we will do so.

Today – not surprisingly – we have three requests to install air conditioning units. Usually our own members, who are retired, have flexible schedules or are enjoying a seasonal break from work, will take on these projects. Today our town’s Public School Superintendent Rick Korb has been out to three homes, on behalf of our Rotary Club, to put AC units in place for elders who would otherwise suffer through this heat.

Me? I’m working in a cool house. Shades drawn. Trying not to wish too hard for a nap. I worked outside in the yard much earlier today, when we could move without suffering from the heat.

Of course, I peek at my drought-resistant plants … the ones in the side yard that bake in direct Southern exposure … and cross my fingers. Will they survive? This week will challenge them.

Imagine Chris and Sarah and our youth group, working further south in the steamy paved environs of Staten Island, working in soup kitchens, food pantries and other un-cooled surroundings. They’re there to help others, and although their service will make a difference, it will be done uncomfortably.

And yet, how uncomfortable are we really? I have known elders who wouldn’t call to ask for the AC unit to be put into a window, because the cost of running more electricity stretched a household budget too far, so it was a choice between food or power. Imagine those in NYC where Chris and Sarah are spending the week, or those much closer to home, who live without access to any kind of shelter or relief, exposed to whatever weather comes. It can be extreme heat or extreme cold … we struggle with both in New England and neighboring regions.

There are so many ways to ease a day like this. I can find ice in my freezer. Change into lighter layers. Pour a cold drink. Stand in a cool fall of water. Change into a bathing suit and go plunge into some chilly water nearby. Install the portable AC unit. Close the doors and rely on my insulated walls to mitigate the temperature swings.

I’m safe. Reasonably comfortable.

It’s easy to notice (and maybe complain) about extremes. But in so many ways, only those on the margins of our community are truly vulnerable to them. And so, Rotary members are out putting in air-conditioning units for seniors. It’s one small way to make life safer and better for own our neighbors.

In times like this, it’s a good idea to consider those quiet folks nearby who might need relief. Who might not ask.

Sometimes we have to intrude a little. Culturally, many people will turn down a polite offer of unspecific-help, or never act on a vague good intention such as, “Let me know if I can help.”

Sometimes we have to do a little more. Name a need and offer specific solutions. Be a little up-close-and-personal in our offer of companionship or support. Knock. Call. Check on a person who comes to mind. Offer a bottle of water, a tray of ice or an invite to come sit in a cool living room until the worst of the day’s heat abates.

I don’t know what the solution might be, but if someone pops into your head, I bet you have a good idea of what they might need and how you might offer some relief, without offending anyone’s dignity.

The weather will likely break with storms on Friday. But until then, it’s a good chance to appreciate the luxuries that make us safe and cool. To be aware that not everyone has such relief. And that we have the opportunity and capacity to take care of each other.

Do you know the saying, “If not us, then who? If not now, then when?” As far as I could learn, it was possibly a paraphrase of the 1st-century teachings of  Rabbi Hillel the Elder, then was attributed to the Civil Rights activist John Lewis and also used by President Ronald Reagan.

Today, as we check on our neighbors and consider our own fortunes, it’s a state of mind we could focus on many matters, not just the heat.

Jun20

Surfacing

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Yesterday, honestly, I had a hard time coming up for air and light. I let myself sink down.

Today I felt somewhat like this excerpt from The Waking by Theodore Roethke

… What falls away is always. And is near.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I learn by going where I have to go.

In a way, it’s an act of self-care, to go beneath the surface and drift there awhile. Being present with the hard parts of our own human state. Submerging – willingly, knowingly, though reluctantly — into darkness and loss, loneliness and hurt. For a finite period of time.

Be assured, I know how to come up again. I did it today.

Though I sink, I don’t stay there, weighted down so long that I drown. Though every once in a while, it’s tempting. Instead I push off the bottom, kick for the sky and break out above the heaving tides. Gulp air and toss my head back toward the sun.

I can do it. I can rise up out of the depths and find what makes me want to be connected, whole, living.

At first, it’s an act of will, to return. Sometimes  emergence into the world again – after sinking down — feels deliberate, and ponderous. Like an obligation toward survival, to surface after going under.

I rely on basics. I hold onto them like floatation devices, know they’ll help me stay above the tide tugging at my ankles. Sometimes a good night’s sleep will be enough. Or if I take a shower and change into a new day’s clothes, it gets me moving.  I write about my feelings and thoughts; try to pay attention and give them voice. Such simple self-care activities are choices that help me back to shallow waters and solid ground.

Then I take the next risk. One way or another, I reach beyond myself. I leave the sanctuary of my own skin and my own brain, and communicate. Connect. Maybe I say hello to someone in my family, if there’s anyone home to greet. Or walk outside. Make a call. Stop at Zumis for tea. Put myself into a place where I’ll engage others.

At some point, this stimulation fills me with endorphins. Hope. I feel fresh. Renewed. Energized. Ready to participate. Active and optimistic again.

Since I repeat this cycle of waking and moving almost every day, it becomes second-nature. A kind of breathing, a movement of emotional and mental muscles toward hope and something greater, that is involuntary. It doesn’t require thought and decision.

It’s a state of being that remains … at least for me, most of the time … surprisingly natural. Surprising, because I always wondered if I’d sink or float, after Jessie died. Most days, I float. Natural, because I don’t have to fight for it most days. (Though I have shared the other kind of days with you, too.)

Otherwise, how would we manage? If I had to choose, every day, to wake up and keep going … if I couldn’t rely on it as involuntary habit, a part of who I am, what would I actually do? Would I make the decision, each morning, to get up and start all over? Yes. Probably. But not every day. Not always.

And so I am grateful that I can find my way back, after a few tries, to the place of open sky and breathable oxygen. I appreciate the reliable shore on which to set my feet as I raise my hands overhead. They are cast wide. Open. Empty. Willing to wait for what comes next.

I trust this part of myself. I can dive or jump into deep waters. But I can find my way and rise back up. Tread water. Swim. And wade ashore.