Debra Basham

Living and Loving

Tag: scs-matters.com

  • Eveready – All is Well

    My father always wore a wristwatch and glanced at it often. He was always on time. When he retired, his company gifted him with a clock. For a good long time, it took a rightful place for prominent display.

    When dad died, I brought home one of the two clocks he kept in his bedroom. The battery was dead, but I sat it on the kitchen counter anyway, as a momento. One day I noticed a ticking sound. As usual the time it showed was incorrect, but oddly, the second hand was now rising up and falling back to its original place over and over. Again, I reminded myself to change the battery.

    A few days later I noticed the clock was ticking away and for the first time in weeks it was showing the correct time. I assumed my husband had changed the battery. But no, he had not! Neither of us had touched it, and each clearly remembered it had completely stopped, except for the day it ticked so oddly. I’m grateful that we caught it running smoothly that day and “magically” showing the correct time. I believe my dad’s spirit was contacting us to tell us all is well.

    The clock eventually stopped again and this time we decided to “signal back” by finally giving that old clock a new battery.

  • Grace is All Around

    My husband and I were a bit traumatized after witnessing an horrific incident at a bridge close to where we’re camping in Santa Cruz, as we were walking back from the beach. A man had a medical incident (DUI-drugs apparently) while driving across the bridge, hitting someone and another person either leapt out of the way or was also hit and fell over the bridge. Apparently he landed on the dock below, then was airlifted.

    The screams from the bridge will remain with us for a long time.

    We went for a lovely bike ride the next day all along the coast. When we passed the amusement park on the boardwalk, the screams on the roller coaster brought it all back.

    However, the following day, the Daily Reflection from Deep Spring Center for Meditation spoke to me hugely. I am the guy who fell over the bridge, the guy who caused the incident, the injured woman. We are all one. There are no sides.

      Even in the most terrible disaster, when people are dying, when people are suffering, those who have emerged personally unscathed experience an excitement of sorts. It grows partly out of having escaped harm themselves. It has its roots in fear. It’s a kind of relief, what you might feel if you were on a bridge with some friends and it began to tremble and pieces fall out, and you all ran to the end and just got off the bridge in time before it collapsed. Other people on the bridge plunged to their death. You would feel a sadness, a true sadness for them, born out of the recognition that it could have been you, but also a very personal sense of relief: I’m safe. My loved ones are safe. We escaped. Can you see that this grows out of fear? There is a separation: WE escaped, THEY died. It’s not okay that they died, but, “Whew, we escaped.” Part of this is the denial of the human of its own mortality: here’s another one that I’m free from; it didn’t get me this time. So there’s a sense of denial—that isn’t me on the bottom of that chasm. Never mind that my loved ones and I are here safely on the side, that’s still US down there.

      The human mind sometimes cannot cope with the enormity of the suffering that it faces. Sometimes that degree of denial becomes necessary for survival. I’m not saying that it’s good or bad, only that the being that would grow in spiritual ways needs to be aware if one is experiencing that, that one is experiencing that. Experiencing denial, experiencing profound fear, feeling overwhelmed, and by way of needing to cope with the heaviness of this catalyst, moving into denial. This is something that can mask as sadness, but it’s not true sadness, it’s fear. Sadness that grows out of love is a very profound emotion. It leaves you feeling helpless, in a sense, deeply aware of the reality of suffering. Simply watch the way it arises, all of you, to further clarify this distinction. ~ Aaron

    There are no coincidences.

    It is truly remarkable Aaron’s teaching was about falling off the bridge….

    The same day as Aaron’s quotation in a book I’m reading The Covenant of Water, by Abraham Verghese, there’s a scene with two surgeons — one is injured and the other looking at him with compassion and wanting to help him — but from a place of oneness and love, and not as “one” looking at the “other.”  

    Reading Verghese’s words also spoke to me. Grace is all around.

  • Mint-to-be

    We had been on the road for over ten hours and decided to stay the night somewhere near where dear friends are now living. Breakfast and a visit before heading on to the scheduled visit with my brother-and-sister-in-love seemed perfect.

    With the help of another friend who was reading reviews online, we settled on a private (rather than a chain) hotel, and while I was checking in sitting on the front desk was a Santa Clause dish filled with the soft peppermint candies my dear friend now calls “therapy mints.”

    “Oh, you have therapy mints,” I began to share. “These are the candies my friend’s late husband always gave her. She did save them but she did not eat them. A dietician would not eat pure sugar. After he passed, she found them everywhere: at his work when she took the death certificate; at the hair salon; at the bed-and-breakfast when she returned to the city in which he had died. For years now, I have been finding them and I always take some for her. It is odd, too, because I worked in the candy section in a grocery store years ago and I had never seen this soft peppermint candy. And now her father is on hospice care and she is away from her home caring for him. I will take one for her. She eats them in loving memory now.”

    The desk clerk said, “Wait there. I will be right back.” She came back with a baggie. “That is such a sweet story,” she began to stuff the baggie with mints, “so take these for her.”

    When my friend called to ask how our accommodations were, I shared what had happened and said, “The location was meant to be.”

    As I heard those words I saw it spelled out as mint-to-be….

    Psalms 25:4-11
    Show me the right path, O LORD; point out the road for me to follow. Lead me by your truth and teach me, for you are the God who saves me. All day long I put my hope in you. Remember, O LORD, your compassion and unfailing love, which you have shown from long ages past.

     

     

  • Reggie Road

    Their purchasing a larger home was quite the story.  They knew they wanted more children and they would talk about a large farmhouse quite nearby where they were currently living. One day she made contact with the owners asking if they would consider selling. The owner responded, “We have just been talking about that!”

    They bought the farmhouse and sold the smaller home they had been living in on Reggie Road.

    Many decades later, she was sitting around the dining table with 8 other neighbors in the 55 and over community where she now lived when small talk took a surprising turn. It all began with the simple question about where you lived. The answers revealed an amazing coincidence.

    “We lived off Napier Avenue,” she said. “On Reggie.”

    “I lived on Reggie,” he surprised her by adding, “We lived in the first house on the left.”

    “We lived in the first house on the left!” she blurted out. “We sold it to some people named Smith.”

    John’s last name is Smith. Smith is such a common name.

    “That is my parents,” he confirmed.

    Piecing the timing together, they were able to piece together his mom and dad had purchased the house from her and he lived there as a youth!

    She then shared a funny story about her nephew having returned from Vietnam without knowing they had moved. He came to visit her but no one was home at the time. Her nephew came on in, got a beer out of the fridge and sat down and drank it. When no one came home by the time he had finished the beer he left. Later he found out he had been in the new owners’ home!

    It was a fun evening, but it was also a significant time of seeing a deeper structure of the weaving of our lives as a tapestry of togetherness.

    The opening and closing stanzas of “Life is but a Weaving” (The Tapestry Poem) by Corrie ten Boom:

    My life is but a weaving
    Between my God and me.
    I cannot choose the colors
    He weaveth steadily.

    He knows, He loves, He cares;
    Nothing this truth can dim.
    He gives the very best to those
    Who leave the choice to Him.

    ~ Corrie ten Boom

  • Two Heartbeats

    Expecting twin boys then the sad news one of the boys was likely not viable.

    The babies’ shower was already planned. Do they cancel? Accept gifts for only one? They decided to go ahead with the shower and when the food was blessed by her aunt, the prayer was spoken with total truth and trust:

    “At this moment there are two heartbeats and we rejoice at this time and the gift of these two lives,” her aunt prayed.

    Both sons were born very early.  At Halloween when the bigger one weighed 4 pounds and the smaller one just 1 1/2 pounds, the neonatal nursery staff at the hospital dressed the boys up as a chicken tender and a chicken nugget.

    Still praying, “At this moment there are two heartbeats and we rejoice at this time and the gift of these two lives….”

    When my bones were being formed, carefully put together in my mother’s womb, when I was growing there in secret, you knew that I was there— you saw me before I was born. The days allotted to me had all been recorded in your book, before any of them ever began. ~ Psalm 139:15-16

  • Small Seed of Faith

    It was late in the evening of a long day and it had been a very emotionally difficult week when her friend shared an  11-minute video which the friend found very funny. She did not laugh.

    “You did not think it was funny?” the friend asked.

    “I did not find it funny. It was long and just not my cup of tea,” she could see hurt in her friend’s eyes and it brought up painful emotions around differences they were navigating in their preferences.

    Still processing the following morning she wrote in her journal: What might I do differently, if I could do it over?

    “You did nothing wrong, Dear One,” was the immediate response she heard in her heart/mind.

    She did a bit more writing in her journal and ended the entry with a question, “Is there anything we could/can learn from the exchange?”

    Checking email, she immediately recognized the answer to her question arrived in the “Daily Reflection”:

    Come back to the place inside you, over and over and over again, where that small seed of faith lies and nurture that seed with the reminder, “We are both right. I am seeing it through my senses and he or she through his or her senses. I do not have to prove them wrong, nor do I have to feel threatened.”

    “For truly I tell you, if you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move; and nothing will be impossible for you.” (Matthew 17:20-21)

     

  • Jarvis Jay MASTERS!

    Feeling troubled about a family member who was incarcerated again, she found herself meditating on Jarvis Jay Masters. He has been in prison for over 40 years, on Death Row. While incarcerated, Jarvis has become an amazing practitioner of Tibetan Buddhism, an author and a teacher.

    For the first time she could see the beauty of his last name: Jarvis Jay MASTERS!!!!

    Her stomach began smiling. Space opened up for the first time in days.

    She was able to see how, in the same way that the saying “all roads lead to Rome” points to a profound truth, all paths lead home. Some paths are longer than others, some steeper, some even rockier than most. But each path is unique and whatever the conditions of that path at the moment – at that moment – that very moment, all paths lead home.

    And no one is alone….

    When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, “Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.” ~ Mr. Rogers (Fred Rogers)

  • Sign from God

    It had been a stressful stretch. She got a difficult “cold” and then her young twin grandsons got it. She was trying to help her daughter care for them.

    Not yet with full stamina, she tripped a bit and jammed her wrist. She did not seek medical attention immediately but a day or so later thought she better get an X-ray. Sure enough, her wrist was fractured, and placed in a fiberglass cast. When her discharge orders included seeing an orthopedic surgeon, the overwhelm overtook her.

    “This is just too much! I am done with it all!!!!” She lashed out in her mind against life.

    Then her eyes landed on a sign fastened on a pole: Keep calm and let God handle it.

    Her whole state of mind and heart shifted. She had heard of people who say they got a sign from God, and she knew she was literally seeing a SIGN from God.

  • Changing Species: It is Our Nature

    A retreat coming to an end is always bitter sweet. Some aspect of it is relief to return to a “normal” schedule, but there is also a lingering longing for the better balance that seems to be the likely result of a time of intentional insight and successive sitting.

    Catching up on email I felt the collective as I read a Washington Post article by Anne Lamont (a pre-promotion for her next book coming out in April) titled: “It’s good to remember: We are all on borrowed time.”

    I found her article helpful and humorous. The opening line really gives you a good sense of her message: “Getting older is almost like changing species, from cute middle-aged, white-tailed deer, to yak. We are both grass eaters, but that’s about the only similarity.”

    Nothing quite as humorous as honesty, is there….

    Some of you might already be familiar with Dancing with the Elephants, by Jarem Sawatsky. Previous posts have referenced this, especially the Corpse Prayer on page 28:

      Be not afraid.

      I give thanks to god who created all things good.

      In christ, all things hold together.

      I am not entitled to life without death.

      I embrace sacred life. I embrace

      sacred death. I embrace the

      growing and crumbling in between.

      Smile at yourself in the silence…

    Writing to a friend about the retreat this morning, I acknowledged that while it was not part of the formal retreat theme, because so many people attending expressed currently navigating health issues often the teachings leaned into how to mindfully accept gracefully our old age, illness, and death.

    Robert shared that as his friend, a long-time mediator, was actively dying his friend had a prayer he repeated three times. Someone recorded his final recitation of that prayer and his own voice was heard at his celebration of life.

    Whoa…. What words might hold my heart in that sublime stability? This morning I am still processing and wrote in my journal: Why do the birds go on singing? Because it is their nature.

    All things with a beginning have an ending. It is our nature. All endings are really new beginnings. It is our nature. Changing species…. it is our nature.

    So yesterday was the end of the retreat, and today is the beginning of living life with the benefits of practice. It is our nature.

  • Perfect

    We gained an hour last night here in most of the United States. What an odd concept, that we can lose or gain time….

    Gain and loss…. part of the Eight Worldly Winds. It is written that gain obsesses the mind, and loss obsesses the mind. We are attracted to gain and repelled by loss, thus we can be tossed about by our (often subconscious) fears and desires.

    This retreat has been placed in the perfect conditions of my life. My nephew David has found himself homeless and without money once again…. I could feel my heart closing after discovering he had not been honest with us.

    During the dinner break last evening I overheard John having two difficult phone conversations: the first was about an ambulance and police cars having been at the home of John’s youngest brother. Thankfully, John’s brother was not the one in medical crisis, and the man living on his property was tended to. In the quest for information, however, John discovered something else about his brother that was distressing.

    Loss and gain, fears and desires.

    The second phone call was about Friday’s evaluation for our great grandson, Jackson. Jackson had seizures one year ago during the fall retreat. While we have lost the illusion that Jackson is neurotypical, we also have watched him gain the ability to walk. He is still not talking. And, yes, it feels like another likely loss that Jackson will be tested this week and it is strongly expected he will be diagnosed as on the spectrum for Autism Disorder.

    The last sentence in my retreat journal from yesterday is: “If we had to be perfect to make a positive impact in the world what good could ever get done?”

    In the evening dharma talk, Aaron told a story about when he and Jeshua as young boys befriended another boy who would have been called retarded. Aaron would smile so broadly speaking of that boy’s loving heart.

    Our son-in-love, Doug, said about Jackson in the aftermath of the seizures: “Jackson is still the same loving little boy.”

    We have been learning that compassion is vital in facing the conditions of our world today. We have heard the term “Satyāgraha,” which is a sort of holding firmly to truth, also sometimes called truth force. It is a particular form of nonviolent resistance or civil resistance.

    We have also heard the word ahimsa, which is Sanskrit for noninjury. In the Indian religions of Jainism, Hinduism, and Buddhism, ahimsa the ethical principle of not causing harm to other living things. There are said to be three types of ahimsa or harm:

      1. Physical, by hurting someone’s physical body.
      2. Vocal, by speaking against others, hurting their feelings.
      3. Mental, by thinking against others.

    From this morning’s Daily Reflection Quote:

    Everything is compassion. It’s only when you’re cut off from that compassion that you can begin to realize that you have free will choice to react with holding things away from you with negativity, with fear, or, still feeling that fear, to make the choice, “I will respond with love, even though my reaction is based in fear. I want to fight back. I want to hate. I want to kill. But I will not allow that of myself.” ~ Aaron

    Fortunately, we don’t have to be perfect to make a positive impact in the world.

    My intention can be: I will respond with love, even if or when my reaction is based in fear.

    Love. Perfect love.

    (Barbara Brodsky shared a precious video on Instagram of a dog being loved on by ponies. She said, “This is perfect love. They don’t care if they are different.” Here is a photo snip:)

    (And also sharing a photo of Junior Bear, my nephew’s Emotional Support Animal, sitting patiently at the table waiting for his breakfast at The Mason Jar Cafe.)