Living and Loving
I have sometimes been wildly, despairingly,
acutely miserable…but through it all
I still know quite certainly that
just to be alive is a grand thing.
Agatha Christie
Visit Gratefulness.org/
This week’s news out of Paris was shocking, and of all times to have it be Holy Week for humanity to experience such a devastating loss of such history and magnificence and relevance and beauty. The Cathedral of Notre-Dame destroyed by fire.
Reminding ourselves of impermanence at times like this, we could/should read all of my blog posts rolled into one message. The message essentially is Agatha Christie’s: Just to be alive is a grand thing.
We might start with Does the tree still live in your heart? and Tree of Hope.
Then move back to Hey, Ma Durga. The following quotation is from that:
“My consciousness has never associated itself with this temporary body. Before I came in this earth, I was the same. As a little girl, I was the same. I grew into womanhood, but I was still the same. When the family In which I had been born made arrangements to have this body married, I was the same… And, in front of you now, I am the same. Ever afterward, though the dance of creation change around me in the hall of eternity, I shall be the same.”
Nothing—NO THING—lasts forever. We know that, and yet we deal with loss as though it is some sort of personal punishment.
Yes, it is loss. Yes, it is sad. Yes, it is difficult. Yes, it is painful.
But we do not have to suffer.
We suffer because of our subtle judgment, the way we tell the story in our own heart and mind. Today’s Thought for Today from Deep Spring Meditation Center explains that well.
Subtle judgment is caught up in the story that contracts and says,
‘I’m not good at this’ or,
‘I should be able to do it better.’
I might look at it and say,
‘I can do it better.’
That’s not a judgment.
I know I CAN do it better.
Can you feel the difference?
‘I should be able to do it better.’ Tightness, tension.
‘I can do it better,’ is a relaxed and spacious perception.
~ Aaron
I have been dealing with Comcast this week, updating router, cable box, and DVR. It took me five trips to the store, and many hours on the phone to finally get everything working. Right in the middle of all of that frustration (and I was feeling frustrated!), I knew nothing that was happening was eternal.
Whatever is happening, watch the stories you tell yourself about what is happening.
Make this a truly HOLY WEEK. Give up suffering….
This past winter has been the f-a-s-t-e-s-t in my memory. We enjoyed visitors beginning the last week of January, and continuing right up until the week before we headed north.
Some groaned when I shared that, speaking of how difficult they found it to maintain balance with guests. I would clarify how fortunate I am we enjoyed everyone (well, maybe not everything about having brother-in-law, Jack, come down with stomach flu was altogether enjoyable).
We found an easy schedule, and I had time while many of our guests rotated activities they did without me—like shuffleboard or Tuesday night 60 cent shrimp at The Waterfront.
I honored my Tuesday afternoon meditation group, my Sunday morning online meditation, and my Tuesday evening Dharma Path study group. I attended my writers’ groups. I wrote my daily pages in my journal.
We enjoyed boating with Florida neighbors, going to Karaoke, playing dominoes, and watching HGTV and Wheel of Fortune.
I rode my bike, I enjoyed eating one meal per day, and I ORGANIZED.
As we prepared for departure, my organization really made the difference between struggling and savoring. For example, days before we were to leave, I took everything out of the fridge, washed all the shelves and drawers, placed clean paper towels on two shelves and in one drawer, and placed all of our stuff on those. I returned the homeowner’s fridge items to the door. On departure day, all I had to do was put our stuff into the cooler and toss out the paper towel carpeting.
Voilà!
Maybe because my overall birth number is 2, I live Habit Number 2 of Stephen R. Covey’s book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People®.
The morning of our departure, I rode my bike to the Snowbird Poet’s group. There was confusion about the time and I sat waiting, writing in my journal: What gift to just be.
Workers were trimming a tree two houses down the canal. The heavy-duty equipment was VERY loud. I continued to write: What do I do with the noise? Do I story tell? Do I acquiesce? Might my peace coexist with the sounds? It has been a holy season. I’ll let my heart savor the sound, grateful I can hear.
Then a poem came through.
Saddest of Days
We buried her today
way too soon
Nothing prepared me
for the shock
Then soon she rose up
gathering all of my memories
Reaching the depths
of my despair
Singing my sadness to sleep
so our joy could dance on….
Debra Basham 04-01-2019 (WC 40)
My journal entry included: It is a time of releasing. Notice how easily it is here, then it is gone.
I’m very aware we are all here and gone, too.
You are, and you aren’t. Many of you are “gone” more while you are “here”, and will be more “here” when you are “gone”.
Just be present. That is enough.
You are enough.
Tell all who know. They all know.
Love, Holy Spirit
Today is Day 91, writing down my soul in my journal. Today is another day to let joy dance on. The saddest day is any moment we forget that….
I have been wondering about the distinction between self care and nurture (kindness and wisdom) and “distraction.” Might we be doing wholesome actions such as exercise or journal writing, or playing music, without being skillful?
Additionally, I wrote to Barbara Brodsky, Founding Teacher of Deep Spring Meditation Center, asking about all of this. “We are encouraged to skillful practice of support practices, Metta, Tonglen, etc., that are a part of Buddhism. Might it also be appropriate to develop skillful support practices that come from outside of Buddhism? For example, Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT). Tapping on the meridians, while being present with difficult body or mind states, and saying skillful statements can support insight and release of painful karmic patterns. One does not try to avoid the emotion, one feels (touches) the emotion, then moves through a process of working with the emotion at the level of energy and awareness.”
Barbara clarified that the primary distinction isn’t the specific practice but what truly has drawn the practice forth. Was the motivation genuine kindness or was fear present, thereby was the real desire to “fix” something?
Barbara went on to say that all support practices from any tradition are helpful when motivated from a spacious and kind desire to attend, rather than from a contracted fearful need to fix.
Barbara said the ‘Daily Quote’ from Aaron clarified the question perfectly.
When we release some of the self-identity and separation, we come to feel our interconnection with everything. The tree dances with the wind not because the wind forces the tree but because the wind and tree literally inter-are. They share the same core of being. The wind is the tree; the tree is the wind. And so they dance together. You can dance with life in the same way. ~ Aaron
Barbara’s summation was simply, “When our practice comes from that place of interconnection, we are attending with skillful support.”
At the relative level we appear to be separate, but at the ultimate level, there is no separate self. You can understand that no wave is separate from the ocean. The wind and the tree and you and I dance with life. We inter-are….
Our granddaughter spent this past week with us. It has been six years since she had done that, and it was quite a week! As her mom said, “You cannot spend a week with Gammie without processing!”
Our first processing was my bout with an intestinal bug the day she arrived.
The second processing was my missed opportunity. Stacey and all the kids refer to a winter visit with us as retirement training. True to form, our big evening event after watching Wheel of Fortune was a game of 500 rummy at the dining room table, during which Courtney said, “I am wishing I had my car.”
My missed opportunity was to just be honest with her and let her know I understood her feeling. Instead, I launched into an unskillful articulation of why it was best for us that she not have her car.
We did not have an overt scene, but there was definitely a loss of rapport, and as soon as the game of rummy was over, she retreated to her room.
I took the lump in my throat to bed with me.
The following morning, I continued processing as I sat with my journal (See Writing Down Your Soul).
Gratefully, after she got up, Courtney and I sat on my bed for over an hour just talking heart-to-heart about LIFE. I shared my painful history around the sexual double-standard. I admitted to having been unskillful the previous night, and I thanked her for not giving up on me.
We spoke of significant things including: my mother’s having hidden a first marriage; my pregnancy at age 16; the culture that forbade my attending school because I was sexually active and a bad influence on the other girls; Courtney’s mom’s divorce from her dad.
Generations of sexual guilt and shame has been carried by the women in our lineage.
Courtney and I took turns with the tears…
Thursday night she sang karaoke at the American Legion and she killed it! One women came over to our table after Courtney’s first number and said, “My husband has an amazing tenor voice. Your singing moved him to tears.”
At the end of her last number, the DJ took the mic and announced, “We have taken a vote, and Courtney R. cannot go home. We are going to adopt her so she can stay here with us on Pine Island.”
It was such a HUGE night of affirmation for all of us.
Retirement training continued….
Friday morning Courtney played shuffleboard with her Gampie and all afternoon she sat in our TV room with him and a half dozen of his senior citizen friends playing mountain music and singing.
After the music, Courtney decided to ride her bike over to Ragged Ass. She did not ask to use the car. She said she would go for a little while before dinner. She asked me to send her a text to let her know what time dinner would be.
Our rockin’ Friday night was to be spaghetti dinner and dominoes with some of our Michigan friends. Her last night of spring break.
As Courtney took off on her bike, I had a sinking feeling. I could not even tell you exactly what it was, but our good friend, Nancy, saw it in my face and asked me if all was well. I said, “We will see how it plays out.”
A few moments later, as I finished putting the house back together after the music gathering, I could not find my phone. I had John dial my number. Courtney answered! “I took Gammie’s phone by mistake.”
As we hadn’t finalized the time for dinner, and now I did not have my phone, I asked John to send a text message to our friends asking what time we were planning to eat. Dinner would be at 5:30.
Because I knew we would be out for the evening, and busy off-island all day on Saturday before taking Courtney to the airport, I had several things needing to be attended to. I asked John to send Courtney a text message telling her I needed my phone. He did that.
She did not reply.
A while later, I asked John to clarify exactly what he had said to her in the text message to about my phone. He had written, “Gammie needs her phone.”
More time went by and still no response.
I looked at John’s phone to see what time he had sent the message.
He had also sent her a message saying dinner was at 5:30 so she needed to be back to leave at 5:15.
I told him it was unfortunate he had done that as it had given her an implied permission it was OK to not return home with my phone before then.
I was trying to calm down, willing myself to accept what was happening, but as time went by with still no reply to the text messages, I was having a harder time finding my center.
John and I were both becoming more and more triggered, and clearly we were reliving a difficult event when Courtney had come to Michigan the previous summer.
John grabbed his keys, headed for the door saying, “I’m going to get her. I’ll throw her @$$ in the car and put the bike on the rack.”
(The bike rack was on the car, because we would be returning her borrowed bike to the friends we were having spaghetti dinner and playing dominoes with.)
I told John going to get her and embarrassing her would not be kind to any of us and would only make things worse. Already after 5:00, it was too late for me to take care of the things I had wanted my phone for, so we both needed to just calm down.
I called Courtney. “Baby, I need you to come home. Your grandpa and I are in a big drama that all started because you took my phone and then didn’t answer our text messages. Since you’re in the middle of it, we need you to come home and help us work through this.”
When she came in, she was red-faced from racing home on the bike in the heat, and she was obviously now upset too.
Fortunately, it only took us a couple of minutes of processing to realize John had been sending the text messages to my phone — thinking that was the only phone she had! She obviously was not checking messages on my phone.
We all saw choice points….
Courtney said she could have returned with my phone as soon as she realized she had it.
John said he could have asked rather than assumed if she had her phone too.
I said I could have used John’s phone to send the text messages myself rather than asking him to send them. I knew she had her phone.
It would have helped if I had noticed he was sending the text messages to my phone rather than hers when I had looked at the time of the messages!
It was important to me to have Courtney know her Gampie had been so triggered that he wanted to ‘drag her @$$ out’ and I had stopped him from doing that.
I thanked her for helping us release not only the difficult time of her visit the summer before, but more importantly, an old pattern of the painful triangle of parenting between Debra/John/Stacey. John would let me be seen as the bad guy.
We all cried and we hugged and Courtney said it really bothers her to be yelled at.
I clarified that I had not yelled at her. I had been emotionally upset, but I had told her what was going on and I had stated clearly what I needed from her.
We were able to recover without any additional processing; and I think we all enjoyed our spaghetti dinner. I know Courtney enjoyed winning at dominoes!
She sent this precious text message while waiting at the airport:
“I loved my week with y’all! Even the processing…. haha.”
Here are two treasured photos taken at the same restaurant near the airport: the first in 2013 when she was 14, and the second after an amazing week of processing with this beautiful woman who calls me Gammie.
This may be the most significant week of processing of entire my life!