Hello! I'm back. At least for today.
It was pure joy to have a week of such intimate time with my little granddaughter, the experience of this year old child. She climbed the stairs for the first time under my supervision, and did it with such eager joy. She stood on her own for a tentative moment for the first time while she and I were playing. And in my arms she saw a fawn still wobbly on its legs, it was that new, and identified it with her excited, "oof! oof!" because she identifies every four-legged creature as a dog.
We played and played and played and then, like her, I needed to rest, take a nap, have some food. I got to see her go to the window on her own initiative and ask for "Daddy?" without anyone having mentioned her daddy in the course of that day. And I got to see her back in her daddy's arms, after he returned from his travels, together again with both her most dearly beloveds, her parents.
Here at the end of May it's hot and humid with code orange/code red air-- suede-like air, thick, almost nappy-- and I'm so thankful for air conditioning. But I took my normal walk yesterday and this morning. Early, while it was still cool enough.
I walked with Giulia in the front pack while we were together, and now I miss being tummy-to-tummy with her, noticing what she notices while she's awake, feeling her soft and relaxed against me when she sleeps. Simultaneously, I am thankful to be so light-bodied and free.
Her empty blue swing seat with the red restraining bar, yellow harness straps and yellow rope looks forlorn and lonesome to me without her to sit in it. I will likely take the swing down, bring it in where it is protected from weathering, where I am not constantly reminded of her absence. I miss her, yes, yet also I am happy to be back to my own quieter routine.
How will I find myself changed by the variety of experiences just passed?
The Japanese honeysuckle that vines all around here in such an invasive, smothering way is also blooming everywhere right now, and has a sweet, sweet smell.
Tuesday, May 31, 2011
Wednesday, May 18, 2011
A Teacher
In her book Hand Wash Cold, Karen Maezen Miller tells of seeking a teacher, and of discovering what she now knows about a teacher:
"A book may teach, but a book is not a teacher.
"A teacher may find fame, but a teacher is not a celebrity.
"A teacher comes from a line of teachers and completes a length of training that he or she freely admits is never complete.
"A teacher is rarely found and yet astonishes you with his or her complete availability.
"A teacher doesn't ask much of you— not your life, not your loyalty, and not a high fee for a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
"A teacher waits." (52)
"A true teacher is likely to be the most ordinary person you'll ever meet." (53)
"Choosing the wrong teacher is worse than having no teacher at all." (54)
Miller is speaking specifically of a Roshi, an "old teacher" of the Zen tradition. I've looked at the list, though, and by its standards I know I've had a few good people as trained teachers in my life.
And then there's every daily life experience that comes to me, each with its lesson, every day full of newness and things to notice in ways I never before have noticed. The natural world, the objects of my life, and all the pets and people, when they are predictable and when they are unpredictable. Again and again I am learning to laugh and otherwise just learning.
"A book may teach, but a book is not a teacher.
"A teacher may find fame, but a teacher is not a celebrity.
"A teacher comes from a line of teachers and completes a length of training that he or she freely admits is never complete.
"A teacher is rarely found and yet astonishes you with his or her complete availability.
"A teacher doesn't ask much of you— not your life, not your loyalty, and not a high fee for a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
"A teacher waits." (52)
"A true teacher is likely to be the most ordinary person you'll ever meet." (53)
"Choosing the wrong teacher is worse than having no teacher at all." (54)
Miller is speaking specifically of a Roshi, an "old teacher" of the Zen tradition. I've looked at the list, though, and by its standards I know I've had a few good people as trained teachers in my life.
And then there's every daily life experience that comes to me, each with its lesson, every day full of newness and things to notice in ways I never before have noticed. The natural world, the objects of my life, and all the pets and people, when they are predictable and when they are unpredictable. Again and again I am learning to laugh and otherwise just learning.
Tuesday, May 17, 2011
Trust
I know I share in the essence of this green, green world, how it glistens, how the green burns so intensely in this rainy day. I am aware that I know nothing except what I know through the slime and mud and mush of this sensuous world. All of it.
Thomas Moore writes, in Original Self, "What would it be like, I wonder, if we were born in some dramatic spiritual way. Say the soul like a sheet of silky gauze fell down from the heavens in a soft flutter? Would that be preferable to the birth of a human being at the fork in the legs amid blood, excrement, and waters? I don't think so, because we are given life by the green mama as well as the angel of fire, and the green mama doesn't think much about what she does. She loves and gives birth and then takes back to herself everything she has birthed.
"The mystery of green life can be trusted because it is not self-conscious. By some magical transformative power, the green of the mother's trees and plants overwhelms us with its beauty." (82)
Thomas Moore writes, in Original Self, "What would it be like, I wonder, if we were born in some dramatic spiritual way. Say the soul like a sheet of silky gauze fell down from the heavens in a soft flutter? Would that be preferable to the birth of a human being at the fork in the legs amid blood, excrement, and waters? I don't think so, because we are given life by the green mama as well as the angel of fire, and the green mama doesn't think much about what she does. She loves and gives birth and then takes back to herself everything she has birthed.
"The mystery of green life can be trusted because it is not self-conscious. By some magical transformative power, the green of the mother's trees and plants overwhelms us with its beauty." (82)
Monday, May 16, 2011
Everything Matters
"The wild geese do not intend to cast their reflection
The water has no mind to receive their image."
~a Zenin
Those two lines capture the essential way that Lao Tzu's words are true, that if we will have peace in the world, the nations, the cities, the family, then we must find the ways to create peace within our own hearts. Retired and tired, both, I live so quietly that I sometimes can imagine that what I do in a day doesn't count for much, that my choices and small needs and contributions no longer matter. But I really know better.
Everything matters.
Every thing, large or small, matters. One's presence or absence, one's silence as well as one's words, the way we eat, the way we talk, walk, what we notice and what is outside our consciousness entirely. All of it. Everything matters.
We set our plans, and work to carry them through, we stay busy in our days, spend our resources to reach the goals we set for ourselves. We strive for all sorts of things we imagine to be desirable. We look around the rooms and hallways of our lives at all we have done. We judge our contributions. Of some things we're proud, of others not so much, but we can think about and observe the results of who we've been, what we've done.
We also can not know how our influence echoes out. We are the geese, we are the water. We also cast and reflect an image in the world without any thought or mindful intention.
This afternoon I planted seventy-two impatiens and two trailing coleus plants, and moved the impatience that had overwintered indoors to try them where we'll see them from the front door. In addition, today I did a whole variety of small things in an effort to make the house a safe, comfortable place for our not quite one year old granddaughter who will visit next week. Simultaneously, I want the house also to be safe and comfortable for our blind and arthritic eighteen year old cat. I relax into the certainty that this, too, matters, every detail matters, for I deeply trust the truth that in the way of the Zenin above, everything matters.
The poplar trees have begun to drop their large, lovely tulip-like flowers, yellow petals each with an orange base, and with cream stamen and pistils at their heart. Lao Tzu wrote, "Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished."
[I found the opening Zenin on page 43 in Thomas Moore's 1981 book Original Self, but he cites his source as Nancy Wilson Ross, from page 258 in her 1960 book The World of Zen. A google search did a less-good job of indicating original source, original author, than Moore did, so I'm trusting Moore, and HarperCollins.]
The water has no mind to receive their image."
~a Zenin
Those two lines capture the essential way that Lao Tzu's words are true, that if we will have peace in the world, the nations, the cities, the family, then we must find the ways to create peace within our own hearts. Retired and tired, both, I live so quietly that I sometimes can imagine that what I do in a day doesn't count for much, that my choices and small needs and contributions no longer matter. But I really know better.
Everything matters.
Every thing, large or small, matters. One's presence or absence, one's silence as well as one's words, the way we eat, the way we talk, walk, what we notice and what is outside our consciousness entirely. All of it. Everything matters.
We set our plans, and work to carry them through, we stay busy in our days, spend our resources to reach the goals we set for ourselves. We strive for all sorts of things we imagine to be desirable. We look around the rooms and hallways of our lives at all we have done. We judge our contributions. Of some things we're proud, of others not so much, but we can think about and observe the results of who we've been, what we've done.
We also can not know how our influence echoes out. We are the geese, we are the water. We also cast and reflect an image in the world without any thought or mindful intention.
This afternoon I planted seventy-two impatiens and two trailing coleus plants, and moved the impatience that had overwintered indoors to try them where we'll see them from the front door. In addition, today I did a whole variety of small things in an effort to make the house a safe, comfortable place for our not quite one year old granddaughter who will visit next week. Simultaneously, I want the house also to be safe and comfortable for our blind and arthritic eighteen year old cat. I relax into the certainty that this, too, matters, every detail matters, for I deeply trust the truth that in the way of the Zenin above, everything matters.
The poplar trees have begun to drop their large, lovely tulip-like flowers, yellow petals each with an orange base, and with cream stamen and pistils at their heart. Lao Tzu wrote, "Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished."
[I found the opening Zenin on page 43 in Thomas Moore's 1981 book Original Self, but he cites his source as Nancy Wilson Ross, from page 258 in her 1960 book The World of Zen. A google search did a less-good job of indicating original source, original author, than Moore did, so I'm trusting Moore, and HarperCollins.]
Sunday, May 15, 2011
Saturday, May 14, 2011
The cat and the deer
"As important as it is to believe, it is even more important not to believe. Pure belief is too thick. There is no room for movement and no motive for reflection. When belief is rigid, it is infinitely more dangerous than unbelief. And belief becomes thick and rigid so frequently that it is often difficult for a thoughtful person to want to believe or admit to being a believer. ....
"...a person of no belief lives an unconscious existence as though he were in a river that he has never observed from the banks. Belief gives daily life the hesitancy of reflection and a little air. Maybe just a dot of belief would save the secularist from absorption in his culture, and a dot of unbelief might save the devotee from drowning in his faith." (34-35) So writes Thomas Moore in his 2002 book The Soul's Religion.
We have an insouciant orange and white cat who loves to go outdoors and explore around the environs of her home. On Mothers Day I'd let her out into the sunny, mild morning, and was then sitting in the window seat, listening to Krista Tippet's program OnBeing and observing the world, when I noticed a deer browsing at the edge of the yard. Then little Miss Yuengling (our pale ale cat, and the companion black-with-white-trim one is Guinness) pranced into the picture, too. The deer, which had been casually looking about between bites, turned to this other creature rustling and bounding about. The deer's jaw and feet stayed very still, but it swiveled and focused it's ears directly at the cat, and craned its neck a bit, and even it's nostrils quivered. The cat bounded and bounced along, oblivious.
A few minutes later I went to the kitchen and from a different window saw that the cat had pranced and circled her way around to where two other deer were ambling along. She appeared so suddenly in their domain that one of them raised its white flag of a tail and jumped a few leaps away before stopping to really notice who caused the startling movement and noise. There they were, these timid, large creatures and the small, unconcerned one commanding all their attention, the little boss of the scene.
Yuengling was, perhaps, foolishly fearless, and the deer were unnecessarily fearful; she seemingly certain of her position, they quite uncertain. Certainty and uncertainty, faith and lack of faith, belief and unbelief. I find myself in both camps, believing in all that is seen and unseen, and also full of questions and distrustful of those who have such definite, certain sureness that they have answers to the whys and ways of the now and hereafter. Seems to me that wisdom writings present wise questions along with wise instructions for my life. Let me be some combination of both the cat and the deer.
"...a person of no belief lives an unconscious existence as though he were in a river that he has never observed from the banks. Belief gives daily life the hesitancy of reflection and a little air. Maybe just a dot of belief would save the secularist from absorption in his culture, and a dot of unbelief might save the devotee from drowning in his faith." (34-35) So writes Thomas Moore in his 2002 book The Soul's Religion.
We have an insouciant orange and white cat who loves to go outdoors and explore around the environs of her home. On Mothers Day I'd let her out into the sunny, mild morning, and was then sitting in the window seat, listening to Krista Tippet's program OnBeing and observing the world, when I noticed a deer browsing at the edge of the yard. Then little Miss Yuengling (our pale ale cat, and the companion black-with-white-trim one is Guinness) pranced into the picture, too. The deer, which had been casually looking about between bites, turned to this other creature rustling and bounding about. The deer's jaw and feet stayed very still, but it swiveled and focused it's ears directly at the cat, and craned its neck a bit, and even it's nostrils quivered. The cat bounded and bounced along, oblivious.
A few minutes later I went to the kitchen and from a different window saw that the cat had pranced and circled her way around to where two other deer were ambling along. She appeared so suddenly in their domain that one of them raised its white flag of a tail and jumped a few leaps away before stopping to really notice who caused the startling movement and noise. There they were, these timid, large creatures and the small, unconcerned one commanding all their attention, the little boss of the scene.
Yuengling was, perhaps, foolishly fearless, and the deer were unnecessarily fearful; she seemingly certain of her position, they quite uncertain. Certainty and uncertainty, faith and lack of faith, belief and unbelief. I find myself in both camps, believing in all that is seen and unseen, and also full of questions and distrustful of those who have such definite, certain sureness that they have answers to the whys and ways of the now and hereafter. Seems to me that wisdom writings present wise questions along with wise instructions for my life. Let me be some combination of both the cat and the deer.
Thursday, May 12, 2011
I like to hear another's point of view on an issue I care about. It is that kind of other-opinion against which I can test my position— push back, perhaps, or at least test the choices I am making, test what I want and do not want.
If I seek a man's point of view, my adult sons are often among the most honest, thoughtful people with whom I can test myself. They know me in ways no one else does, nor ever can. They are kind, and will engage with whatever issue is on my mind, whatever issue I bring forward to discuss. They are true to themselves, and, also, they love me.
And I love them, forever and ever. I think Mother love is the closest I've observed to unconditional love. In relationship with my sons, it seems important to me to notice the experience of how very complex the deepest kind of love actually is as it takes on the forms of flesh and blood in this world. Knowing my own depth and complexity of feeling for (and relationship with) my sons informs me about who my own mother was, as well.
I do not comprehend in any way the mind of a woman who claims she does not love her child. But I do comprehend the infinite variety, the perfect imperfection, of Mother love, and the helplessness and power that are not mutually exclusive in that relationship.
If I seek a man's point of view, my adult sons are often among the most honest, thoughtful people with whom I can test myself. They know me in ways no one else does, nor ever can. They are kind, and will engage with whatever issue is on my mind, whatever issue I bring forward to discuss. They are true to themselves, and, also, they love me.
And I love them, forever and ever. I think Mother love is the closest I've observed to unconditional love. In relationship with my sons, it seems important to me to notice the experience of how very complex the deepest kind of love actually is as it takes on the forms of flesh and blood in this world. Knowing my own depth and complexity of feeling for (and relationship with) my sons informs me about who my own mother was, as well.
I do not comprehend in any way the mind of a woman who claims she does not love her child. But I do comprehend the infinite variety, the perfect imperfection, of Mother love, and the helplessness and power that are not mutually exclusive in that relationship.
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