Category: Balance

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In This Moment

My days have become filled with video calls, phone calls, resource pages, and conversations with teenage sons who graze in the kitchen between classes, seeking both nourishment and the reassurance of human presence. I sense a fullness hanging between all of these conversations and interactions. It contains the story of the past that is rapidly crumbling. This fullness contains the future which has not yet emerged, full of unknowns and questions without answers. And it contains a present which is constantly moving. My mind won’t even pretend to try to stretch to understand or embrace all that it contains. It is obvious that it would be too much to hold. I can bear witness but I cannot hold it all, at least not with any certainty or for any length of time. It would be too much. This fullness is just… well, it’s full.

But, really, isn’t that the way it always is? Moments fade and eventually dissolve as they pass. The future is always an unknown.

The greatest gift and a source of solace in this time of fullness, is to remain in this moment — this one that I can see, hear, touch, feel, smell and taste.

In this moment, I feel my fingers on the keyboard and taste the hot coffee in my mouth. I hear the hum of the heat pump reminding me to be grateful for my home and the heat that we can bring to it. In this moment, I look out the window to see the sun splash orange across the horizon under that low, heavy cloud that is shaped like Tennessee. I feel my rib cage expanding as I inhale a little slower and a little deeper. In this moment, when the future has been unhinged from the past, I am just right here, noticing the fullness with a wide open heart.

What are you noticing in this moment? (This moment — the one when you are almost done reading this post and have already begun to think about what you will do next…) I invite you to pause. Notice your feet on the ground. Notice your breath creating expansion and then release within your body. Look up and around. What can you see? Hear? Touch? Smell? Feel? Taste?

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Prelude to the Emerging Season

On Thursday evening, I finally noticed that I had been burning my candle at both ends. I had hit the proverbial wall. When an event that I had been planning to attend Saturday was cancelled, I had an opportunity to recalibrate. As I crossed the item from my calendar, I noticed that I could, with just a little more schedule wiggling, claim 72 hours of rest time. Rest is not easy for me. I tend to use extra minutes in my day to catch up on a project here or fit in a little correspondence there. But my intention for 72 hours was to find ease, to put some distance between my body, my mind and the insistence to be productive. I was attempting to practice non-productivity. Over these 72 hours, I did not set my morning alarm or follow my regular morning routines. I have not insisted on anything, except for being non-productive. As I observed my impatience and eventually relaxed and found stillness, I regained some balance. I feel rested.

Over these same 72 hours, our community has been formulating a response to the coronavirus in amazing and beautiful ways. Individuals, organizations, schools, and businesses are prioritizing community health and safety over any other agenda. People are choosing to stay home, grounding themselves in order to provide a measure of distance and protection to unknown individuals among us. I have never seen this kind of compassionate, selflessness on this scale in my lifetime. I am falling in love with humanity anew. Business as usual has been interrupted in a most extraordinary way.

There are disappointments, inconveniences, and real hardships involved in this interruption. The impact will not be evenly distributed amongst our population. Those who are most vulnerable, due to age, illness, or access to resources will be hit the hardest by the virus and the response to it. It is not fair. If I stop there, I am swallowed by the shame, sadness, and anger that always arise in the face of inequity. If I trudge on, it is hard not to notice that there is also an incredible opportunity here.

Yes, there is injustice. Yes, there is fear. Yes, there is even death. We will all be touched by deep, heart-opening loss. But there is also great love in our collective response. I am encouraged by that. I am praying that we may use this time to recalibrate, to begin to move towards a world that is more just, more sustainable, more aligned with our true nature. I do not have any answers, but I am sitting with openness, curiosity and a strong belief in our capacity for change. Hope lives here. I offer it to you:

As we slow down and encounter our fears, worries, and regrets:

     What possibilities will we find in the spaciousness of our newly collapsed schedules?

     What love and peace will hold us aloft?

     What belonging will soothe our isolation?

As we spend more time in our homes and local communities: 

     What bridges will we build?

     What support will we offer to others?

     What support will we need from others?

As we notice the impacts of our lives on the lives of others:

     Will we claim our participation in the web of life?

     Will we remember the legacy of survival that ensured our own lives?

     Will we remember that we will one day be the ancestors in someone else’s story?

As we recognize our depth of responsibility to the interconnected human family,

     Will we also notice our interconnection with all living beings?

     Will we notice our interconnection with the living, pulsing earth?

     Will we notice that we are, in fact, one?

The lily and tulip spears nudging through the barely thawed soil in my yard are a prelude to the emerging season. May we also enter this new season as neophytes, open to the promise and surprise of our own unfolding.

May you be well. May you be safe. May you be healthy. May you be at peace.

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Getting to Work

The blazing orange sun was low on the horizon when it caught my eye. But this flaming ball of heat and light caught my heart and imagination, not just my attention. Like a candle that has been touched gently by a match, I spring to life, a flurry of activity and energy. Not sure where to put it, I clean the house, literally. I know where this energy is intended to go. I am supposed to be writing this morning. But there is a hesitation and an anxiety that has to clear before I can settle into the keyboard. I have stepped away from my project for a week. I barely remember what I was working on or where I was going. “Do I really have anything to say?” “Will anyone be interested in this?” “Can I pull this off?”

 I trust that the self doubts and questions will subside as I move. Those nagging questions, all those versions of  “Am I good enough?” and “Who cares?” will give way. This is not about me. While my writing always emerges from my lived experience, it also always meets with the wider world in some universal expression. As I dust and de-clutter, I am not  “gathering my thoughts.” I am creating space for thoughts and feelings to arrive from beyond me. I am making space for wonder, inspiration, and ideation. I am making ready. Ready for whatever this creative spark of inspiration will become. Ready for whatever fire kindles to life within me. Ready to allow my own flaming energy to expand and rise to meet the flaming sun. The sun and I — we are two kindred spirits offering light and heat. In fact, we are all kindred spirits, balls of potential linked by a thread. Perhaps it is really a wick that runs between us. Once ignited, we need only to allow the energy to flow through us. We need to stop cleaning the house and sit down at the keyboard. Rather, I need to stop cleaning the house and I need to sit down at the keyboard. I am very familiar with my methods of procrastination and my self-doubt. They need to be acknowledged but I also need to be careful not to indulge them or fall too deeply into their grip.

I am meant to live in this time and place deeply, to notice, reflect, and share. This sharing is the work I am meant to offer. Gathering my thoughts, feelings, and questions into words that can be shared in blog posts, books, and poems is one way that I can cast heat and light back out into the world. I am grateful for the gifts of my life and I feel responsible for passing them on. Mary Oliver cautions, “The most regretful people on earth are those who felt the call to creative work, who felt their own creative power restive and uprising, and gave to it neither power nor time.” I intend to not be regretful. I will give both power and time to my creative work. To do that, I have to remind myself to value it. I have to remind myself that it is the work I am here to do. And, sometimes, I need to procrastinate a little bit before getting to work.

I believe that each one of us has a role to play in the continually unfolding story of the universe. Do you know what your role is? Do you know what you need to do to allow your creative energy to burst forth? Is there something you need to stop doing? Or something you need to start doing? 

Those are big questions. Maybe they sound like more pressure and more expectations coming at you from the outside world. You probably didn’t need that from me on a Monday morning! Fortunately, these are not questions that require answers. But they are good questions to sit with from time to time.

Today, if you can, sit with them in the warmth of the sun for a few minutes. Allow yourself to open to possibility. Allow yourself to be warmed and nourished. Allow yourself to notice the heat that is within you meeting the heat that is coming from outside of you. Trust that you do know how and when to offer that heat and light to the world around you.

When you return to your day, may you return with a little extra light. And may that light kindle a flame in someone else who kindles a flame in someone else who kindles…

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Winter Compost, again

We keep a 1 gallon stainless steel compost bin in our kitchen. A few times a week, it fills to overflowing with vegetable scraps and fruit peels, tea bags and bread crusts. This morning, the top wouldn’t be squeezed down on top one more time. It was time to take it outside to the large compost bins down by the garden. As I picked up the bin, I wondered why it had to be so full that it was no longer useful before we would take it out. Why was I so reluctant to engage in this 10 minute task?

We used to faithfully follow the advice of Harvey Jackins, founder of Re-evaluation Counseling, who said, “when it’s time to take out the garbage, take out the garbage.” Speaking of emotions and memories, Harvey was suggesting that if it is not serving you, remove it. In our home, we have often repeated Harvey’s words as a reminder to manage both household chores and also to manage emotional health and balance. The walk to the barn with the garbage or to the garden with the compost is an opportunity to clear the mind and heart as well as the house. It always feels better when it has been done, but we have also been known to let the compost and the garbage pile up. This has been one of those times.

After pulling on hat, mittens, coat, boots, and the little metal spikes that go on the bottom of my boots, I was ready to take the compost out this morning. Even with the spikes on my boots, I walk down the sheet of ice that is my backyard very carefully. At that pace, I am suddenly aware that taking out the compost in the deep of winter is an act of patience and faith. After all, it is still freezing outside. The cycles of freeze and thaw that we have been experiencing still lean more heavily toward the freeze. That is why the backyard is a sheet of ice. The compost in the kitchen bin will join several months worth of food scraps in a larger pile of frozen food waste that is waiting for the heat and light of springtime. It is no wonder I resist this chore right now; patience and faith are hard work. There are dozens of diversions in my modern life that require a lot less effort than this.

But this small household chore is a ritual of affirmation, an opportunity to declare my confidence in the cycles of the earth. Spring will be arriving. The frozen compost will thaw and decompose. The frozen earth will thaw and nourish new life. I have complete confidence in the certainty of this repeating universal cycle.  Perhaps it is a counterbalance to the myriad ways in which life feels uncertain. Or perhaps the rhythms of the earth and skies provide a larger container, a safe holding space for the ups and downs of daily life. Or perhaps, paying attention to the seasonal cycles offers a wide lens view of a world I more often experience through the specific and particular moments, emotions, and events of my life.

Last weekend, at Renewal in the Wilderness’s Imbolc Celebration, we took a slow walk as we considered  the ways in which heart, hand, head, and hearth resonate or inform our lives. I was surprised to find myself drawn toward walking with the “Heart and Hand” group rather than the “Hearth and Head” group. After all, I spend an awful lot of time in the kitchen and a lot of time wrestling with words. But Sunday, I was drawn to consider the work of my heart and the work of my hands. As I walked, I thought about my ongoing process of learning to attend to the necessary balance between giving and receiving generosity. I thought about compassion and the ways in which my hands (and my body, in general) provide a vehicle through which I can express the love in my heart. I noticed how much courage we all must muster to follow the calls of our lives. And I thought about the patience and faith that carry us through the dark and frozen seasons of our lives and into the softening light and warmth.

And I though about all of this again as I walked the compost out to the frozen garden this morning. And as I wrote this post, I remember that I wrote about the winter compost last year too. Life is full of repeating cycles and I am called to live into them deeply and anew at each return. It seems all of this — the noticing, the remembering, and the returning — is the work of my heart and hands, and my head and hearth too. What is yours?

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Blessed are We: Keepers of the Light

This post is adapted from a message originally shared at the Islands Community Church on Bailey’s Island, Maine on February 2, 2020. It was well received there and I am glad to share it here as well.

This weekend, we celebrate St. Brigid’s Day, honoring birthing and new life, and we celebrate Imbolc, the ancient Celtic celebration honoring the Goddess Brigid’s return to the land at springtime, bringing light and life to all that is dark and frozen. The Goddess Brigid and the Saint Brigid share many of the same qualities — generosity, compassion, creativity, and birthing. Their domains are the hearth, the forge, wells, and poetry.

As I prepared for this morning, I studied up on these two iconic figures. I tried to keep the stories of the Saint and the stories of the Goddess separate. I wanted to share one of the stories of Brigid’s miraculous capacity to feed the hungry by turning well water to beer or nurture a cow until it gave a lake of milk rather than a bucket. I wanted to tell of how Brigid delivered an imprisoned man from the cell where he was held to the threshold of his home in the instant he muttered her name. But I couldn’t remember whether the Goddess or the Saint was the heroine of each story. These mythic figures insisted on mingling in my mind.

Eventually, I came to believe that is probably how it should be anyway. Brigid, whether goddess or saint — was an elemental figure, associated not only with earth as bearer of spring’s fertility, with the air as breath of life, with water as a source of purification, and also with the fire as summoner of the sun. It is this last element, the fire, that we will spend a little time with this morning.

In what is now known as the village of Kildare in Ireland, a sacred fire burned for centuries, an offering to the Goddess Brigid for protection of herds and harvest. The ritual flame was tended for an entire day by one of nineteen priestesses. On the 20th day, the goddess Brigid herself tended the sacred flame. Centuries later, when Christianity moved into the region, St. Brigid built her monastery and church in that exact location. She continued the custom of keeping the fire alight. Now nineteen nuns were the flame keepers and on the 20th day, Brigid tended it herself. The sacred flame is believed to have survived up until the suppression of the monasteries in the 16th century when it was extinguished. In 1993, the Brigadine Sisters of Kildare relit the perpetual flame and there are communities of flame keepers throughout the world that maintain perpetual flames dedicated to Brigid’s honor.  

What delights me about this story, is the continuity. What a wonder to consider a single flame persisting through storms and wars, changes in government, changes in religions, major shifts in human behavior. And it seems that, even in the 300 year period when the flame at Kildare was extinguished, a flame somewhere (or perhaps in someone) was kept alive. The memory of Brigid remained strong, ready to resurface when and where it was safe enough to do so.

This is a literal story but it is also a wonderful metaphor for our own lives and faith journeys. Spiritual traditions throughout the world honor light as an expression of the Divine. In Quaker tradition, we talk often of the Light, as in I am holding you in the Light or I recognize the Light of God within each one of you. Consider that if there is the Light of God within each one of us, that means it is here in me too. I suspect I am not the only one in the room who finds it easier to recognize and honor the Light in others than it is to honor it in myself… 

In the spirit of Brigid’s flame, in the next few minutes, consider how you tend to the Divine Light that burns within you. For it is that eternal, internal flame, that leads each one of us to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly in our hearts, our homes and in the wider community.

    • Tending to the divinity within us and around us is an act of devotion. It requires commitment and it requires community. Remembering that there were 19 priestesses and then 19 nuns keeping Brigid’s flame burning, how do you enlist help to tend the burning flame within you?
    • Tending to the divinity within us and around us is an act of courage. Remembering the profound systemic changes that the perpetual flame at Kildare survived, how do you lean into the eternal divine light that permeates the roller-coaster of your finite, terrestrial life?
    • Tending to the divinity within us and around us is an act of creation. Remembering that Brigid fed and nurtured, healed and transformed with a generosity that was without limits, how do you sustain a flame that offers compassionate heat and light to those who need it most?

As we close, I’d like to share with you a simple practice that helps me welcome and nourish my own Light. It can be a particularly potent practice today. Imbolc is the half-way point between the winter solstice and the spring equinox. This time, when the increasing light becomes more noticeable and the earthbound plants and critters (including us) begin to peek out from our winter retreats, is thought to be a time of union between light and land.

If you are comfortable, close your eyes and notice the points of contact between your body and the earth. Notice that the wood of the floorboards and the pew connect you physically to the church which stands upon the living earth. As you take a long, slow deep breath, imagine pulling the breath up through the earth, through the soles of your feet, through your legs, up into your heart space, and finally into your head. Release the breath with a long, slow exhale.

As you open your eyes and take another long, slow breath in through the soles of your feet, know that through your very life — in words, in actions and, quite simply, in breath — you bridge the divine and the earthly. May you know that you are whole and holy.

Light

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Morning Lessons

This morning, long shadows stretched out across the new snow. Looking up to see the waning moon, the contrasts were dazzling. The moon hung just above the treetops in the fading night sky, a brilliant beacon portaging awe. The crisp, lean lines of the tree shadows lay on the ground, a study in boundaries and steady presence.

This morning’s play between darkness and light is a relief. The strong contrasts are beautiful. Though distinct, the edges seem soft. In these illuminated differences, there is truth and integrity. That is the relief, if only for these few moments of early morning, to see the profound beauty in the place where opposites meet. I recognize the relevant lesson for my life immediately. Rather than becoming exhausted or overstretched by trying to embrace the immensity of contrasting strong emotions, I can relax into the place where they meet, noticing tension and contrast and also beauty. This simple noticing takes me off the roller coaster in my head and heart and onto my feet, rooted firmly in this generous earth. Breathing into this deep knowing, my attention turns fully to the mundane tasks in front of me, easing gently into the busy part of the day as I make breakfast, fill the wood stove, pack lunch boxes, and prepare for departures.

An hour later, the night shadows have given way to a ubiquitous softness. As the winter sunrise casts its pale light across the sky and snowy landscape, everything became washed in gauze, including my newfound clarity. I am suddenly washed in gauze too. What am I doing now? How is this important? Can it be done faster so I can move onto something else? What happened to that sense of peace? Why am I so fickle? It was just here. I could feel it. And now it has slipped away, like sand through my fingers.

I am tempted towards frustration for half a moment but instead, I smile at myself. After all, this is the way of the world. Why should it be any different for me? There is coalescing and there is dispersal. There is coming together and there is resting apart. There are phases and cycles, ebbs and flows. I can only endeavor to pay attention and to learn from each step along the way. I do not need to ride the roller coaster every time it invites me on board, but I can pay attention to the ups and downs. I can remember that the moon and the long lines of the tree shadows teach and so does the soft gauze-washed sky. And I can remember to hold and release it all lightly, with love and generosity.

May you too notice the teachings that arrive unbidden in your day.

May you hold them with love, levity, and generosity.

May you release them with love, levity and generosity.