Living and Loving
It is this steady expansion of the loving heart we all share that is the greatest hope towards peace.
But even if peace does not come at this time,
still that loving heart is expanding.
When it expands far enough, there will be peace.
Yes, there may be a lot of death and destruction before.
But hatred will never lead to peace.
Fear will never lead to peace.
Fear of fear will never lead to peace, and hatred of hatred will never lead to peace.
Trust your capacity for love.”
~ Aaron,
Deep Spring Center
Thought for Today
Our plans were to attend a colleague’s “laughter yoga” presentation but the three of us arrived at the venue only to discover the presentation had been cancelled due to a death in the family. I live very nearby, so soon we settled around the kitchen island, sipping tea in such a sisterly fashion.
Your guess is as good as mine how the conversation settled around her seemingly life-long dissatisfaction with her birth sister. The stated question was about her desire to block her sister’s text messages. We tossed, we tangled, we slogged through decades of sibling turmoil before going our separate ways.
It felt restless, almost tragic. In my heart it was so much more…
I opened email to read:
June 19, 2018
Tenderness Tinged by SadnessFear does not allow fundamental tenderness to enter into us. When tenderness tinged by sadness touches our heart, we know that we are in contact with reality. We feel it. That contact is genuine, fresh, and quite raw.
Excerpted from:
“Overcoming Doubt,” in Smile at Fear: Awakening the True Heart of Bravery
by Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche,
page 58
That was it! Where was tenderness? Where was the true heart of bravery needed to love someone who is behaving in an unloving manner?
I opened my next email:
On this day of your life I believe God wants you to know …
… that if you become ruffled with every comment that
you consider a ‘slight,’ you will never find peace.Nor will you find it by always separating yourself from
those who ruffle you. You can only end so many
friendships before you find yourself very much alone.
You can keep making new friends, of course, but
sooner or later they will ruffle you — and then what?Perhaps the better course might be to let the ruffle
go. People rarely mean it when they do that, and a
touch of gentle tolerance and easy forgiveness every
day is even better than an apple…Love, your Friend …
Neale Donald Walsch
Craft Tip #11 (p. 92-98), from The Crafty Poet: A Portable Workshop by Diane Lockward, clevely rewriting “You Are Tired” by e.e. Cummings, I have discovered my own “voice.” Writing this allowed me to finally experience peace around all the pain that family members can inflict upon one another without ever meaning to. I trust you will agree, “It is Time!”
It is Time!
It is time
(We know)
Possibilities lie beyond this moment now;
You are ready.
Let us join hands
Go to a place where new dreams are born-
(Listen. Our names are being called!)
We can go
(I hope)
To a place where the forlorn gather
When the heart yearns for relief;
Done with things as they are-
Just that.
We are done.
Travel to heaven comes not without peril
But the path is clearly written within your own chest-
Just say yes!
Your feet will find their way, one sure step and then the next
For it is time
We will be safe, rest assured.
Let’s set off now
Sail the seas of satisfaction to the shores
Of eternal serenity;
Hear the sounds of true solace
No more singing the dirge;
Music made from the instrument of sheer joy
Resonating with each precious soul
Suffering no more (Pray tell!) not we
We who know it truly is time.
Debra Basham 6-22-2018
This opening quotation in a friend’s daily thought really spoke to me. June 16, 2018, I celebrated the birthday of my dear friend and yoga teacher in a small class that meets on Saturday mornings at my office. The five of us are close, not just friends, but more like sisters.
Left to right: Norleen, Debra, our teacher Kathy, Nancy, and Claudia.
Let’s just say we are all women of a certain age.
As women, we share a lot more than yoga, but yoga is something we love. We each have come to yoga for different reasons, at different times, and in different places, but we treasure being together in yoga now because yoga is about renewal of Mind, Body, and Spirit.
The five of us are beautiful women, inside and out. We have spent well over a hundred years meditating, practicing yoga, and being intentional about our being.
After an hour of yoga practice, we brewed peppermint tea grown in Kathy’s garden, sweetened with an old fashioned peppermint stick. We ate my nearly world-famous vegan bran muffins, and we were nourished by love and respect and commonality.
We were infinitely grateful to honor Kathy, who honors us by bringing yoga to our life. Yoga is not just about what happens on the mat.
We each drew a card from the Wisdom of The Crone deck. Kathy drew “Passages.”
Nancy recently gifted me a copy of Frank J. Cunningham’s Vesper Time: The Spiritual Practice of Growing Older. This book may seem a bit too religious for some, too early for others, and irrelevant to many, but at any stage and especially at our age the wisdom and inspiration is worth integrating because, as Cunningham writes, “… we are in a phase of life that we will not look back on as we do on childhood, adolescence, and adulthood. We do not grow out of this phase.”
HALT is a way to remind ourselves the importance of not letting ourselves get too hungry, angry, lonely, or tired. After a long day of unpacking, going to play dominoes with good friends was made much more fun when I got to hold a new kitten, Lucy. Lucy has an older sister kitty, and I talk to her in my best squeaky cat talk voice but KK is too shy with strangers to relax and snooze.
Here is Lucy napping on my lap during the game.
Lucy’s personality and her surrendered napping on my lap jogged my thinking about how different we all are. KK wants to be close but just can’t trust enough to let herself enjoy it.
At a recent Grief Journey Group several people shared profound pain around loved ones wanting or needing to do their process differently. One person wants to pack up photos, give away clothes, and move on. Another chooses to have the loved-ones items stay in their places. With tears born of experience, the message of encouragement was, “Just because we do things differently does not mean we don’t love each another.”
This awareness is not just important around loss or grief because recognizing and respecting differences is key in all relating.
The past ten days has been very busy for me. A close friend moved into Glen-Aire, our 55+ Manufactured Home community, just down the street. She had MAJOR back surgery last year and is still healing from that. Since I am a bit excessive about organization, my skills were welcome.
The move was more major than most because this couple just got married in April. A few weeks before the wedding both of their homes sold immediately with very quick closings, necessitating all the contents of both homes being packed up for going into storage. The unpacking, therefore, was unusual in that every box came from one or the other of the homes and the contents of each had to be negotiated compassionately. They moved out of large homes with basements and garages and a life time of belongings. They moved into 13, 000 square feet.
Many times I said it clearly, “If it is meaningful, there is room for it.”
I am humbled to say right now I probably know where more of their things are than either of them. But it won’t stay that way long.
And Lucy won’t stay a tiny kitten long either. I trust my friends will love curling up in their new home, and I trust Lucy will continue to enjoy curling up with new friends.
The nature of life is change. Some changes are welcome, some are forced; some are pleasant, some are painful. Sometimes we move into much larger or significantly smaller spaces, or even into a brand new community.
Whatever changes are happening for you right now, I hope when you are tired you will let yourself curl up somewhere safe and take a nap. May all beings rest well…
wings to fly,
roots to come back
and reasons to stay.
~ The Dalai Lama
I am suddenly feeling quite weary. My eyes are burning and I can barely stay awake. It is almost 11:00 pm, but I don’t think this is physical tired.
Something is pulling me inward. I am pondering.
My sister officially retired today. We have shared an office wall for many of the years she has worked as a massage therapist. In the past decade we have been together in three offices. After a session I could smell her essential oils when she would come out of her room on the way to the restroom to wash her hands. It smelled like love to me.
Today I told her I will miss seeing her between clients. She said, “But now you can see me for other stuff. I will have time and energy to do things.”
So what is this lump in my throat, this sense of sadness or loss?
Today I was reminded of the teaching: When the conditions are present emotions will arise.
I am saying goodbye to our relationship as colleagues.
I am so thankful we are not saying goodbye to our relationship as sisters.
She resisted an urge to share a personal account about her brother’s experience in Afghanistan with her book group until another member commented on having read another book by the same title of the book the club was currently reading.
“The other book is about a soldier in Afghanistan,” the club member said.
She knew immediately that was a sign she was to share.
Her brother had died in Afghanistan.
These are sacred stories. Pay attention to happenings in your life. Do you have a story to share? Send email to debra@scs-matters.com.
This morning I was catching up doing “Day One” of Pompe Strater-Vidal’s 11-Day Meditation Challenge on the 4 aspects of Immeasurable Mind, Loving Kindness, Compassion, Equanimity and Joy, that started yesterday. The message on loving-kindness practice was about how you have to begin by loving and being kind to yourself. I was directed to identify something that I do well, a trait of mine that I appreciate. (You may want to play along with me as you read this and identify right now a trait of yours that you appreciate.)
The trait I identified was sharing freely of my professional skills/knowledge with people that I meet, such as I had done a few days ago with a young woman in the waiting room when I went to have an X-Ray of my back and hip.
The woman volunteered that she was really uncomfortable, needing to urinate. I told her I was sure they had a restroom in this area, as I had not noticed she was pregnant. She went on to say that she was waiting to have an ultrasound so she could not go until after and the baby was kicking. She said she had always loved feeling the baby kick, because she had previously experienced a miscarriage. At this time, the kicks were very uncomfortable due to her full bladder.
I told her how she could place her hand on her abdomen and tell her baby she normally loves feeling the kicks but right now they are uncomfortable and it would be very helpful for there to be no kicking until after the ultrasound. I shared about when I guided our daughter to ask our granddaughter to wait to be born until they could get her room ready. Courtney ended up being induced!
I gave the woman a free download card for my “Welcome Baby!” audio designed for listening during pregnancy, preparing for labor and delivery.
This morning as soon as I remembered the interaction with this expectant mom, suddenly I had a cellular memory of having been in Europe in 2011. On the climb down from visiting the Montségur Monument, we saw an expectant couple. I struck up a conversation, found out they were from the US and were having their first baby. As I remember it, the woman I was traveling with was very critical of my sharing with them about “Welcome Baby!”. She said it was rude and selfish and inappropriate to have an unsolicited conversation with them and then tell them about the “Welcome Baby!”audio.
As soon as I accessed this memory from Europe, I had another simultaneous awareness of a time I had been punished when I was innocent. I was in third grade. The student sitting behind me tapped me on my back asking for help. She was having difficulty sight reading a word in her book. My guesses were very far off sounding out “Can-oh-wee” and “Can-ow” until I put the word into context. When I realized the word was “canoe” she and I both collapsed into a fit of giggles. All our teacher saw at that moment was me, turned around leaning over the other student’s desk, and the two of us laughing.
We were called up front and we both got paddled. To add insult to injury, I was paddled with the paddle I had brought in for the teacher so she could paddle the boys for being bad.
Today I know the core of forgiveness and loving-kindness waiting all these years to come into my innocent heart is my own sense that the boys deserved to be paddled.
I opened my email to read this:
Today’s thought from the Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation is:
We can practice forgiveness each day.
Resentments have a way of creeping back into my psyche even after I have let go of them. I know that holding a grudge is harmful to my emotional health and can threaten my abstinence, but what can I do when I keep feeling anger toward someone?
In the interest of recovery, in my own best interest, I can continue to forgive each day. I may not be able to forgive the person once and for all, but I can do it right now, just for today. With practice, who knows? Perhaps the resentment will disappear.
When I remember that my own track record is far from perfect, I realize I could use some daily forgiveness too, both from others and from myself. True forgiveness reaches across time and touches everyone.
Just for now, I can let go of resentments and forgive. If resentments come back, I can forgive again.
You are reading from the book:Inner Harvest by Elisabeth L.
I do not have permission to reprint this quotation from Inner Harvest, so I ask forgiveness from Elisabeth L.for sharing it.