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Mothers Dreaming Daughters and a Future

May 4, 2021 in Confusion to Clarity, Family Stress, Getting Unstuck, Identity, Noticing, Power of Connection, Remembering, Surrendering

Dear friends,

It’s complicated here in this Bardo, this world between worlds that we call 2021. Like any animal emerging from a cocoon or hibernation, many of us are tender and tentative. As we take each step toward “normal,” we ask ourselves, Now where was I? (in the Before World). But in all the excitement, we can easily forget to ask Who am I Now? No longer in the old safe world of traditional etiquette, we’re on our own to find some graciousness as the world keeps changing. Daily. Mask on or off? How to come up with safety agreements with people we love who nonetheless disagree with us on the red-hot subject of vaccinations?

Decision fatigue alone is enough to make you want to crawl back into lockdown. There’s no One Size Fits All, and we’re on our own to fashion something that works each time we engage with our families and friends. Even if we figure something out, there’s no guarantee that things won’t all change again. Quite the opposite. This requires a flexibility and equanimity I’m only beginning to feel in this life. If we were butterflies emerging from the cocoon, we’d flap our new wings before flying into this new world. The human equivalent is to take that second question about who I am now more seriously. To take time to adjust to this new reality before taking a giant leap back OR forward in this Simon Says world of the pandemic.

Sometimes when I need perspective I look to my ancestors for inspiration. I found some by going all the way back to the Yellow Fever epidemic of 1870. My great great grandmother Maria Raum, a new immigrant, lost her husband and an unborn baby to the Yellow Fever plague in Memphis after his beer wagon was commandeered to remove bodies. Maria was left penniless and unable to feed herself and her 3 and 5 year old daughters. Unable to go back home to Germany, unable to speak the language of the new world, she did what she had to do so that they would survive. She sent them off to a Lutheran orphanage while she worked as domestic help and saved enough money to be able to support them. After three years she emerged from the world of pandemic domestic service to find they had been packed up and loaded onto an Orphan Train headed west. Hundreds of miles and inquiries later she found them living with their new farm families.

What she did next is my favorite page of family history. Instead of fighting to reclaim her girls, she and her new husband built a house down the road to watch them grow and have children of their own. She’s buried in a small German cemetery near her daughters and their adoptive families. Now that’s a radical form of resilience, an example of true Motherlove.

I call on this grace and resilience as I dream of what this next world might become. I’m beginning right here, where I am today, dreaming this new future, knowing even if it all changes love will find a way. Always does in the end.

PS. I’ve been writing more poetry during our current pandemic. I’ll be reading this new poem about my mother’s mother’s mother, this week, along with my Open Handed Writers’ group and friends. It’s a free Zoom call (with the support of our local bookstore)

If you’re reading this May 5th, come listen tonight at 7 PT and join us as we celebrate Mothering as a Verb. Just visit this page for the link.

Dreaming Daughters

The women in my family dream their daughters,

And so I dreamed you up, a strong Baby Woman.

Just as my mother dreamed herself a sister instead of a baby

And her mother dreamed a prodigy, Shirley Temple of Saline County.

And her mother before her dreamed up a milliner.

But the mother before that, a new immigrant turned into a widow by Yellow Fever,

That mother just dreamed of getting her daughters’ bellies fed

And so she let them go by boat to an orphanage,

signs hanging from necks in the only language she knew,

saying keep them safe and I will come.

And when she didn’t, couldn’t, an orphan train took them

To new farm families with mothers who at least spoke the old tongue,

who adopted them and who fed them

and put them to work cooking for farm hands until

they began to have dreams in this strange, new language

and when their German mother traveled hundreds of miles to find them happy,

she built a little house the size of her new dream

down the road from their full-bellied lives.

But she just kept on dreaming and watching in that new place

because that’s what mothers do sometimes.

Hope is a Thing with Feathers

April 2, 2021 in Noticing, Remembering, Spring, Surrendering, Wordlessness

Aloha, Dear Friends!

Looking out the window at the flowering cherry outside this morning, my mind goes back to this exact scene a year ago. The view is the same, but the feeling is so different. Today spring’s birdsong reminds me of a memory tucked away in the folds of this old but durable brain. I hear the words of Marcus Borg, a mentor and religious scholar who helped me to rediscover my Christian roots. One Sunday he was speaking of the Holy Spirit, which I’d never had much use for before, although I often thought of myself as a Spiritual Person.

His words resonate even more today: As you watch for the face of the Holy Spirit, be quiet. Patient. Like a bird watcher longing to see a rare and shy bird. I was immediately taken with the image, and it has visited me often since then. I’ve found it immensely comforting to allow that bird into my heart when I’ve felt overwhelmed by my own dark nights or by the newest examples of human ignorance or evil. (It probably goes without saying that this past year it’s become an almost constant companion.)

But I’ve learned again and again that the shy bird of soulful comfort will not show up at my command. This is one of the biggest takeaways from my year: love, faith, and hope cannot be stalked. They reveal themselves in their own ways, peeking out of the brush of everyday life, usually accompanied by acts of mercy or kindness. I’ve learned to be a little more still and to patiently watch, with an eye out for tenderness.

Hope is a Thing with Feathers. Emily Dickinson’s poem has been with me this spring. And her words keep coming back to warm me in this chilliest of lands. And today while hiking, what showed up? A Thing with Feathers. A beautiful soft bird’s nest woven of grass and softened with white and speckled feathers. Enough already, I thought. And so I share this photo and Dickinson’s poem with you today, in recognition of the beauty of synchronicity, my favorite poet, and National Poetry Month.

May that bird with feathers perch more and more often just outside your window. May your heart be filled with the power of hope. May you be blessed and healed as we find our ways back to each other…one bird at time.

With love,

Susan Grace Beekman

Hope is the thing with feathers

That perches in the soul

And sings the tune without the words,

And never stops at all.

And sweetest in the gale is heard

And sore must be the storm

That could abash the little bird

That kept so many warm.

I’ve heard it in the chilliest land

And on the strangest sea

Yet never, in extremity,

It asked a crumb of me.

~Emily Dickinson

The Grandmother Stands

March 3, 2021 in Family Stress, Remembering, Surrendering, Winter, Wordlessness

For the last couple of decades my family has owned a cabin in the old growth forest of the Pacific Northwest, less than two hours from our home. Whenever the speed of life was too much it was always there for us. Our refuge. When the weather was right, in the early mornings, I’d wrap up, sit outside the many-paned windows, and take in the forest. In the center rose an ancient red cedar snag, undisturbed by the hemlock, cedar and fir upstarts, all less than a hundred years old, who all seemed to gather around her. I named her Grandmother Snag. Every time I sat, there she was. I began to think of her as my own private Natural Wonder. And then, a few months ago, our cabin and the surrounding forest were wiped out by a fire that sped through the valley at speeds over 60 miles per hour.

As the news rolled in, confirmed by drone reports, we knew that all the family mementos and irreplaceable instruments had succumbed to flames. Somehow this mattered less when I imagined the Grandmother Snag there, holding fast to the hillside, surviving even this devastation. I wrote a poem about her. I poured over the drone footage and asked witnesses if they’d seen her, joking but slightly hopeful still. As the small community tallied and mourned our losses, the reality of destruction was too enormous for me to bring up my fanciful image of one snag.

Then last week, five months after the fire, my husband Geo was finally able to enter the hazardous area to see what remained. We were told to expect little, which turned out to be a falsely optimistic prediction. The entire old forest was gone, along with more than 70 cabins in the valley. Damaged and dangerous trees had been felled and stacked and now lined the rutted and muddy road, sometimes twenty feet high. Only ribbons of twisted metal and a lone fireplace remained, along with two stove boxes. Two perfect bicycles were melted to sprockets. A fire-blistered propane tank somehow hadn’t exploded, and a once-green metal outdoor table with four chairs sat rusting, waiting for some human company.

George brought home one box of melted remains: a Kokopele metal plaque, a dragonfly door knocker, the remainders of vintage Mary Poppins lunchbox, melted like a Dali clock. Then a couple of weeks ago he surprised me with a Valentine’s gift: a family photo of sorts, one he had taken at my meditation site. In the middle of the blackened forest hillside only one landmark remained. And there she was. Tilted to a 45 degree angle, but firmly and deeply rooted in the forest floor. Charred and bent but not broken. Grandmother Snag.

Up in Smoke: An Inventory

1 outdoor pit toilet with peeling door
1 sixty-year old gingerbread cabin
2 decks, shaky floors,
5 beds, and games and drums for a crew
1 hand-hewn ladder to a skylit loft,
1 retirement clock
1 white and robin-blue wedding quilt
signed by your grandmother.
1 bluejeans and corduroy quilt
hand tied by your mother,
that one that covered us that first time we slept together.
All remnants of all fifty years gone with the spiraling and swooping
cleansing fire of our last anniversary,

And also: 2 bay windows opening to
18 species of tree,
Uncountable rampant lichen and fern.
An entire ground floor of deep moss
Greenest quiet of ancient forest mornings
The pale sun lighting Grandmother Snag,
Red orange indigo scrubbing the emerald floor.
Long walks on rivers in the fullness of forest
Infinitely star rich nights with music and friends,
Beyond fire and smoke.
Beyond time.

The Other Side of Through

March 3, 2021 in Confusion to Clarity, Getting Unstuck, Noticing, Remembering, Spring, Surrendering

The tight pink buds on the tree outside my window and the daffodils everywhere are broadcast spring here in the early warning channel that is the Northwest. Diminishing Covid numbers bring hope, and it feels like an enormous cloud is about to lift. It’s not lifted yet, but patches of blue are now visible. In related news, on Friday I’ll get my vaccine booster shot.

Words from my gospel choir days come to mind: There’s another side of through/ the whole world waits for you. You got to hold on, hold, on, till you’re on the Other Side of Through.

I loved swaying back and forth, belting out these lines when I was in the midst of wave after wave of turmoil in my life. There was a long time there when I just needed the reminder that there WAS another side. I clung to the thin refrain and did just what it said. I kept on.

Then one day, one week, one season, I began to notice it was true. I was no longer in the eye of the storm. I was on the other side. I was through.

Next another image comes to mind from up the hill in the ancient forest where my family had a cabin for years. There’s a trail sign that reads Here 2, marking a trail, one that ends at a There sign at the bottom of the hill. Funky hand-lettered signs marked the start and the end. All of this went up in smoke last September, including the forest and all human habitats. What was left behind is scorched earth, memories, and at least one good insight: It was not possible to be either “here” or “there” at once. And there was a whole wooded hillside to navigate between those two points.

That’s how it feels this early spring. Not yet There, to the end of this pandemic and all the cautions it entails, but not Here 2 either, focused every day about each detail of quarantined life. We’re somewhere on the trail to There, and we are still moving to the Other Side of Through.

I’m keeping in mind another memory: The trail of soft forest duff wound gently down a hill, one careful step at a time.

Be well.

Surrendering to the Force

March 1, 2016 in Spring, Surrendering, Winter, Wordlessness

All around us, everything small and buried surrenders to a process that none of the buried parts can see. We call this process seeding and this innate surrender allows everything edible and fragrant to break ground into a life of light that we call Spring.
~ Mark Nepo

Spring here in the Pacific Northwest is slowly unfolding its many layers of stunning beauty. It can last for five months. This year began with the arrival of the snowdrops in mid-January. Then one daffodil volunteered for a walk-on role in my kitchen garden. Now the long act of March opens the stage with the bulb brigade, filling yards and fields with daffodils, accented by jewel-toned hyacinths. It’s a cacophony of color all month as the season of the blossoming trees begins with camellias, and ends with the final bow of rhododendrons in June.

But there’s a backstage and hidden part of spring that I forget when I’m distracted and delighted by the pastel heaven of the show. It’s easy to forget the seeds still in the ground, patiently waiting for their cue. The earth is bursting with potential, but each little seed or root must be allowed its full time to be nurtured.

Late winter’s gift is just this: the sweet energy of deeply resting and growing strong roots. I trust the dark to do its magic with the seeds and bulbs still nurtured by the earth. I would no more dig up the seeds to check them in the light of day than I would unearth my partially-dreamed future. I’m not ready to leave behind the peace of the surrender to “the part we cannot see.”

And so I need to remember that these gifts are still accessible, beneath the riotous glamour of early spring. In my inner world, this is what I long to savor: the mystery, the miracle of rest, the not-knowing of how or why I’m growing, or even which way I’m growing. I want to linger a while to appreciate this, even as my attention gradually shifts to welcome the prologue of summer.

I have learned not to dig into the dark earth and expose the seeds that are still gathering strength and readying themselves in the dark of soil and earth. The same is true for my deepest, quietest inner life. It is still imagining into its next creation.

No me moleste, Leave me be, my soul sings. The deep invitation of winter surrender must be respected fully before I’m ready to move forth. I turn my faith to The force that through the green fuse drives the flower (to quote Dylan Thomas). It is this force that I’m trusting to bring it all on, in all the glorious manifestations of spring and summer. When the time is right.

Infernal, Internal Beeping (or Why My Dog Sits on My Head)

January 26, 2016 in Noticing, Surrendering

It was 6:00 this morning, and my dog Calvin was sitting on my head. Lucky for me that he only weighs 16 pounds, I thought. He’s also very fluffy, so a head sit can feel oddly cozy. I started wandering back toward my dreams.

For maybe a minute. Because then I remembered that head sitting only happens on the Fourth of July, in thunderstorms, or for other such apocalyptic events. Then Calvin began pacing. On my head. He seems to believe that this is where “I” live. And I have no idea how he got that impression.

Okay. Enough. Time to listen. There was something amiss in the field. Not smoke, but a smoke alarm battery signal. A few years ago our son barely made it out of a house fire alive. First chance we got, we planted them obsessively everywhere. If I lay very still I could hear it: one tiny beep every minute. All the way on the other side of the house. Up very high.

This is how I came to be standing under the high beam in the living room wielding a broom, before the sun had come up. I always knew those witching tools would come in handy, I thought. Eventually I batted down the whining smoke detector and searched for the switch. No such luck. In fact, no luck at all finding my way into the battery compartment or into anything else that made sense. The alarm box was locked tight, as far as I could tell. This is the point where I would normally call out to my ever-trustworthy fixer of a husband, George. But this time there was no quick salvation. He was out of town for a few days.

So this dilemma was totally up to me to solve. I considered, and then rejected, the idea of dropping the white plastic case from a two-story window or clubbing it with my handy broom.

Still no smoke appearing anywhere, so I placed the box in the sunroom, already closed for the season.

Back through the house to the back bedroom and to the coziest universe I know, to the magic land that exists in my ridiculously soft bed.

One more chance for sleep; it’s still not too late.

Except for the head sitting. Which began all over again. And then the pacing of the soft white fur ball.

And that is how the thick blanket in the back of my yard ended up in the far corner of my garden. It peeps every minute, until further notice. Or until I can find a Smoke Detector Shaman or magical directions from the internet ethers that will solve the problem.

But. Standing out there in the below-freezing weather, awake now, an amazing miraculous thing happened. I was actually fully alert for the glow that spread over the oak savannah across the way as the sun came up. I pulled a shawl around me and stood there. I was nothing. Nothing but receptivity in the moment.

And then while I stood bathing in the frigid beauty, the light turning pink, I looked across the meadow behind my house, and there it was. A rainbow.

Peace.

Then.

A minute later, the infernal, internal beeping started again.

Time to get going, it said. To focus on those goals. Get organized. Be productive.

But then, stillness. Another voice arose.

Is the desire to be in comfort, to stay asleep; is it stronger than curiosity?

How many times does a Call need to come when I’m not listening?

The Universe just keeps sitting on my head. Until. I. Get up. Get my feet cold. Do…however reluctantly, what is the next thing to do. The next thing, all day long. Follow the simple directions and listen for the beep when I don’t pay attention.

From the Chaos of Love to the Practice of Remembering

January 12, 2016 in Family Stress, Remembering, Wordlessness

The past month has been a blur of reacting, creating, learning, reacting again. And those words don’t even begin to describe the chaotic, warm loving mess of the Holidays. A quick glance back at the circumstances helps me give myself kindness and credit. About two weeks before the holiday, my daughter was hit by someone making an illegal left turn. Her safe car and its airbags saved her, but she’s been spending time with us to heal, with the help of the amazing body workers I call my friends. Just before that, one of my best friends died of a brain tumor that had haunted her (and her loving family) for years. On New Year’s I flew to LA to be inspired by Byron Katie’s World Summit. Then back to daughter and client support. Lots of intensity on both counts.

And then last night, a dream. I’ll spare you the details, but in summary I was lost and searching for my dorm room, at a writing conference, of all things. Once I got that figured out, I discovered some lost earrings on the floor of the hallway: very specific earrings I that I had treasured fifteen years ago, with a rose-colored flower and a crystal. I had found the Place of Lost Special Tiny Things that I Love.

Seldom has a dream seemed more obvious, and so I sit myself down and write it this morning. And what comes up for me is how deeply powerful it is to Remember when I’ve been caught in the trance of life’s circumstances. And then I remember that the very act of Remembrance is the source of many rituals from the world’s religions, from Christian Eucharist to Sufi Zikar. And that the contemplatives in most traditions, Eastern and Western, excel in preparing the mind so that the voice of Remembering can be heard. So that what’s truly important CAN be remembered.

Every year but this year, I’ve reserved a day in the first week of January, as close to January 6^th as possible, to celebrate my private version of Epiphany. It’s a time after the holiday hubbub when I choose to focus on this process of clearing. And remembering. And deep listening.

This year I gave myself a Sabbath to return to Winter’s quiet, and the magical right-brain work of dreaming showed me the way. Instead of moving headlong into my day, I grope my way from the dreaming to the lighting of candles and the writing of it. I get very quiet.

And here I am again, where I was a year ago, and a year before that, in an Epiphany of the mind, and I remember what I had forgotten for a while. I collect the tiny jewels I sometimes forget and spread them in the light of Remembering. And there it is, my hidden jewel of a soul is revealed.

And I remember. I can allow. Let go of the strain of trying to control the uncontrollable. Trust the beauty of the process that seems to come without pressure. Come to be. I breathe a deep sigh and my mind settles in. I write these words as a part of the sacred and time-honored process of Remembering. Life can be trusted. Gentle. Kind. It shows the way. And my own private ritual of listening, of writing this right now, helps me remember .

This Longing. This Advent. This Future.

December 14, 2015 in Surrendering, Winter, Wordlessness

She was brought up in a Southern Baptist church, where Catholics were widely believed to be a bigger danger than Communists. So she’d never heard of advent until someone gave her kids a cardboard calendar with chocolates. This seemed vaguely suspicious and sophisticated in a European way. It intrigued her.

So on the first Sunday of that December she woke up curious. She looked up Advent on a couple of Google Sites. The words left her with a couple of impressions which seemed vaguely mysterious and therefore attractive:

Ritual Time for Patient Waiting.

The Beginning of a Deepening Relationship with the Divine.

Longing for Union with the Possible.

Remembering.

She’d never liked the idea of waiting, and when the virtue of patience was handed out, she’d come up short. She had no interest in longing either, but apparently she had no choice. Even with all the gratitude journals, the positive rewiring and the inner work at Letting Go, she wanted. There. She’d said it. Even though she hadn’t wanted to admit it before.

In truth, there really was something she truly wanted to come true, something she longed for, as long as she was giving herself permission to long for anything. She needed a solution. Now that turkey soup was running out, and she could see it coming. The holidays. They were looming near, like a tornado about to pick her up and to drop her off who knows where? What she did know, if the past had anything to do with the future, was that it would likely be a disorienting month.

Then she saw it. There was the longing. She wanted it all. The jingle bells and authentic holiday joys of family and friends, the making merry, the too-muchness. And she also wanted to find and hold the peace. Now that she thought about it, she wanted more yet. Even while she was in it, there was a longing to be on the other side of this holly and mistletoe storm.

A pull of hope stirred from some mysterious inner source. A longing for a deeper connection with something deep and wide inside, a wanting to know herself as more than she had ever believed she was, as something she didn’t even have words for. She could feel confusion stirring. And then there was a slight hint of a trust she had never known before. She listened closely. And it was at that moment that her body whispered a memory of another time in her life. And then she remembered.

There was a birth she was waiting for. This was the longing. Her mind relaxed as if it had figured out the answer to some complicated puzzle. And then a breath. A new hint of confidence from some deep pilot light. It was as if a new faith in possibility was born. There it was. An answer key had showed up from some unknown source. She simply knew that she could trust her inner directions as she listened. That this was the way to discover what she could do for all of those who suffered around her. She could almost see it coming, this new faith in healing, in forgiveness, in the future, in the possibilities hidden inside and beyond herself.

And she lit a single candle for advent.

Resting in the Grace of the World

November 17, 2015 in Confusion to Clarity, Power of Connection, Remembering, Wordlessness

It’s been an unsettling time. A time when unpredictable acts of violence make it hard to make any sense of things. The mind can’t comprehend, and I notice myself caught up in the detailed accounts, trying to figure it all out. Trying to find the kindness in the Universe that I have come to trust. There are times that Grace seems like a highly abstract concept. I turn to words of wisdom and poetry during times like this.

Today I came across one of my favorites, a poem by Wendell Berry that has always given me deep comfort when I was ready to settle into it, like a warm bath. And then these words emerged, like very irritating instructions: “Rest in the Grace of the World.” What? Impossible. Where’s this so-called Grace right now? My mind raged.

And then. Then. The day-blind stars reveal what I’ve been missing all along. Peace has once again become possible. From within, from that place where all wild things reside: inside. From the place that holds this poem.

The Peace of Wild Things
by Wendell Berry

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

Ending the curse of the “If Only’s”

November 10, 2015 in Confusion to Clarity, Getting Unstuck, Noticing

In my determination to crack open the safe that holds my Real Self hostage, I keep noticing I still have beliefs about what could be different “if only…” This usually implies an argument with my current life because of something in the past: If only…I hadn’t been hit by that car, hadn’t broken my ankle and then proceeded to ignore it and push on for years. If only I’d lost that extra 20 pounds I’ve been carrying around for too long.

Strategy is the Soul’s Servant

November 3, 2015 in Getting Unstuck

I found these words jotted down in my inspiration file, sandwiched between quotation marks. I have no idea who said it or how it arrived there. I couldn’t even find it on Google. So I decided that this doesn’t matter. Wherever it came from, it was Right on Time, and it was for me. Because I’ve been thinking about strategizing a whole lot lately. For one thing, I notice that it’s a favorite activity for me and for many of my friends (and clients). After all, when people call me for coaching that’s often what they have in mind.

And it just so happens that strategy is one of my mind’s favorite things to do. It’s very good at it. There are many perks. My life is richer because of it. Way richer.

But when I look closer, I notice that it almost never works out when planning, strategizing and implementing come too early. Then they become the masters of the soul, not its servant. And masters, like captains of certain star ships, are totally dedicated to Making It So. They really don’t have the time required to listen to the inner directions of the shy soul.

If there were Ten Commandments of a life dedicated to success, the first three might be: thou must take charge, thou must plan things, and thou must make them happen. Again, it’s not that these aren’t excellent in their own place and time. They just belong a little later on the list. But the planning mind doesn’t like this. It can’t waste that time, after all, and the enemy of getting things done quickly is checking in with the soul.

It does take time to look inside, to find sabotaging habits, to unpack old beliefs, to clear the way for change. Checking in with ourselves was never the plan of our inner Efficiency Expert (first cousin of the Strategizer). This involves slowing down, sleeping on it, sitting with it. And this takes valuable time away from Making it So.
The Strategizer Within is chomping at the bit to just get going.

But first there’s that procrastination or resistance thing to overcome. Most of us have experienced the pain of getting caught in that bog. Sometimes the fear (or experience) of delaying action makes a bully of the strategizing mind. Its worst fear is confusion, which can come from believing those limiting thoughts that lurk below the surface.

The key to moving through the confusion is to check it out with the body. As Thomas Moore advises, this is where the soul usually speaks. If there’s urgency there, it’s the Bully. But f there’s hesitance, there may be a reason. Check with you. See if your quieter soul-self can tell you what’s stopping you, what limiting beliefs are keeping you from acting. Then question them. Ask you if they’re true.

This can take courage, but the soul knows courage. It also knows truth. And truth is kinder than the fiction that has created the beliefs. There may be still be fear, but there’s also a readiness, an exhilaration. This is the soul’s way of speaking, the still small voice of inner freedom. This you can trust.

As you follow the directions that come from this deep listening, the Strategizer becomes a servant of the soul. And action comes Right on Time.

What I notice is that there’s an undertow that will take us out and keep us from simply acting if we haven’t asked a good question or two to clear the way.

Ask yourself this: Have I asked me yet? Often as not, the answer is “sort of.” Because there’s a big rush of impulse to Just Do It, right? Take a dive into your body and listen some more. What feels like freedom? What lie am I believing that would keep me confused? What is truer? Then listen. Because the path to a freer and more juicy life lies in the stillness and the quiet answer.

My Daughter, Myself: Heart Beats One

October 6, 2015 in Body or Aging, Power of Connection, Wordlessness

There’s a little thing that has been going on with my heart these last months. They call it A-Fib, and without the boring details, let me say it’s been irregular. And sometimes a tad scarey. After having my heart stopped and started a couple of times, it’s now regular once again. Really. That’s what they do about this thing. My heart stood still. Stopped. And then it was rebooted. Literally (and I do mean this word as it was intended. It’s not a figure of speech).

That in itself is kinda amazing. But there’s bigger juju going on here. During the past year, my daughter Johanna was completing her fourth CD, the first one devoted entirely to sacred and inspirational music.

Some back story. My daughter and I are quite different. From the very beginning I understood this child would teach me what I needed to know about the world outside of books and thinking and being a brain. She’s one of the most intuitive people I’ve ever met and has been through at least as much hard stuff in her life as I have. And I am (literally) twice her age. We attended the School for the Work of Byron Katie together ten years ago and have continued to disbelieve our thoughts and clear up our thinking on a regular basis.

So about the juju. Just as I am recovering my heart rhythm, she’s released a CD entitled Heart Beats One. The title song is quickly becoming an anthem because it’s so beautiful and catchy. She wrote it to describe what happens when humans come together; say, when we’re in a yoga class or listening to music. Our hearts (again, literally) begin to beat as one. Scientists call this entrainment. I call it the magic of belonging.

In the last few weeks I’ve been working with a biofeedback device on my phone (it’s called Inner Balance, and it’s from the HeartMath folks). But I’ve also been going to yoga, singing in groups, sharing meals and music with friends. Each one of these things can bring me to that Happy Place called entrainment.

But Johanna’s song “Heart Beats One” takes me there immediately. I know this because I’m measuring it. Here’s a link if you’d like a listen. (Warning: it’s addictive and you might want to add it to your collection).

I also talked about some of this in a radio interview, which you can listen to here:

And there’s even better news. If you’re one of my dear ones living on the West coast, Johanna may be at a yoga studio near you in the next couple of months as she launches the CD and teaches Lullaby Yoga from Seattle to LA and back to Oregon. I love it that my heart can beat again, in rhythm with yours, as we connect.

The Princess and the Best Season of Your Life

September 29, 2015 in Body or Aging, Fall, Noticing, Power of Connection, Wordlessness

I was a child during the Pleistocene era, television was a new thing. Howdy Doody time was a special time for a whole generation, as we were clumsily ushered into the age of media by a freckled puppet (he had one freckle for every state, which meant that there were 48 back then).

One of the main characters on the show was an “Indian maiden,” Princess Summerfallwinterspring. Since the host was Buffalo Bob, presumably she was a part of the Wild West theme of the show.

From my current perspective I can see this with a critical lens. The commercial culture was minimizing the ancient wisdom of many tribes. I’m guessing her name was even intended as a spoof of the Native American connection with the Earth. But in my six-year-old imagination something took root, buried deeply, perhaps. I’m still a big fan of the turning of the seasons.

A couple of days ago, along with hundreds of people in my town and millions of people on the planet, The Super Blood Moon eclipse captured my imagination. It was an astronomical event that got more press than anything in my memory since the Total Eclipse of the sun in the early 1980’s. But it’s not the hype that got my attention. It’s the simple fact that so many people would gather to watch something so slow, so silent. That fact is as rare as the event itself, given the attention-grabbing, high-stimulation lifestyle most of us can’t really escape.

Only poetry can capture this, I thought. Then yesterday I shared dinner with some dear friends who are embracing the last few days of one of their lives as brain cancer takes its ultimate toll. Her birthday is this weekend. We remembered the fall season as a series of the birthdays we’ve shared in the process of aging together. The meaning of autumn, of the eclipse, of the seasons hit me in the center of my heart.

Maybe it was a visitation from the seasonal Princess of my childhood. But I was immediately hit with the connection between the loss of my friend and the autumn season. And at a deeper level I began to see autumn’s special moon as a way to mark the passage of time. Once again I was nourished by the rhythms of nature, when closely observed. When I returned, I found an ancient Chinese poem I’d nearly forgotten:

Ten thousand flowers in spring

The moon in autumn

A cool breeze in summer

Snow in winter.

If your mind isn’t clouded by unnecessary things,

This is the best season of your life.

– Zen Master Wumen
11th Century

May you bring the moon of autumn into your heart during this season of your life. Be here for it. And feel the richness of a life lived as it passes. Don’t let it pass without notice.

When do I Shrink to Fit?

September 23, 2015 in Confusion to Clarity, Getting Unstuck, Noticing, Remembering

During my early years, 501 Levis were the only game in town. Shrink to Fit was their slogan then. It’s still their slogan. I was a roundish twenty-something, but I believed in their advertising. I desperately tried to see myself as a long, lean, hippie who could just slip into a random waist size and make it work around my thighs. Although the jeans didn’t fit me perfectly, the slogan did, in other ways. Having been raised in a large family, shrinking to fit has come easily. Too easily. It may work for denims (sometimes). But it’s not a great life plan.

The phrase has been running through my mind the last few weeks. During my daily self check-ins, planning my calendar, balancing my roles, working with clients, and talking with friends; it just keeps coming up. And as I’ve listened to my peeps during the last few years, I’ve discovered that this isn’t unique to me. It seems pretty ubiquitous. But my best point of reference is, as always, my own experience.

Here’s what I’ve noticed. If I’m not paying attention, there’s a tendency to make sure my plans fit others’ needs before my own. It’s so subtle it’s barely a whisper. And most of the time it works just fine. Because the reality is that I prefer peace and harmony to almost anything else. But I’ve often used my gift for blending in and making things fit as a short cut.

I’d be the last to dismiss compromise as a strategy. But I sometimes think I can read the mind of the other person and then simply fit into their thinking as I have imagined it. I’m not even stopping to ask me. But when I sit down to talk about a difference of opinion, having already compromised, I tend to take on more than is good for me, or I otherwise cut myself off at the knees. And when I’m not able to take care of all of me, I end up hurting others, because eventually I get resentful. And let’s just say it’s not pleasant to be me or to be around me when that happens.

The cost of being out of my personal integrity isn’t always immediately obvious. But over a lifetime it’s had a cost. The last couple of weeks I’ve been taking part in a class offered by one of my teachers, Martha Beck. She calls it the Integrity Cleanse. Her approach has been helpful in recognizing some of the places (or relationships) where my jeans are still tight.

The Cleanse is an extreme version of clearing out places where you’ve been shrinking to fit, and you can look it up next time it comes around, but there’s nothing that works better for me than noticing moment-to-moment. When I bring the light of awareness into the pattern, it shifts. This is where the magic resides, ultimately. And this is my invitation to you.

Notice where you shrink to fit in your life. Just notice. Where do you say “yes” to get along, even as your gut gets tight and you hear a little voice saying “no?” Pay attention. In the moment, you might do what you’ve done before, which is fine. Or you could buy some time by saying, “I’ll get back to you.” With that time, you’ll be able to get clear about what fits and what doesn’t, and you can take the next step toward your own truth. No drama is necessary. Just the kindness of truth and a voice that can begin to say, “that doesn’t fit for me.” From this simple act of courage, everything can change over time. I trust this process as much as I trust the water in the stream near here to wear down the rock. Truth (and integrity) have a power of their own.