The Grace of Change

Just Because

There I was, knitting happily away on a freeform piece I was going to felt into a bowl, both cats curled in my lap. Life was luscious until the Usefulness Tyrant in my head stomped into my awareness and demanded: What the hell are you doing with this lumpy pile of yarn? And why are you doing this?

I look down at the teal yarn and my happiness deflated like a pricked balloon. Ssssssssssssssssssss.

Taking up the Usefulness Tyrant’s line of interrogation, I echoed, Yeah, why? This isn’t earning me any money. It’s not useful. It probably won’t be pretty (my first felted bowl was a tad misshapen. Friends kindly suggested I could use it for a hat “or something.”)

I lamely argued back that perhaps my felted bowls are Spiritual or Healing or at least Transformative. I convinced no one. The truth is I love to make them just because I love to make them.

I'm Giving Up Polyamory

I know polyamory is in, sisters, but I'm out. Polyamorist no more.

OK, so maybe I'm embellishing a little. I'm not really a polyamorist, at least not in the "biblical sense."

But I sure am with my attention. And it's plumb wearing me out, not exactly a place from which I experience pleasure or joy.

I've realized that whatever is in front of me to do, in some sense, is my lover. And my attention is the way I make love with the weeding, the bill paying, the knitting, the person I'm talking with.

First, The Bad News

First, the Bad News: Pleasure won't protect us from pain, death, loss, or illness. Pleasure cannot inoculate us from our own pain or the pain of the world. Pleasure isn't a magical amulet we wear over our hearts to prevent them from breaking.

Opening our hearts and souls to pleasure guarantees that our hearts and souls will be open to pain, too.

But wait, all is not lost.

First, the Bad News: Pleasure won't protect us from pain, death, loss, or illness. Pleasure cannot inoculate us from our own pain or the pain of the world. Pleasure isn't a magical amulet we wear over our hearts to prevent them from breaking.

Opening our hearts and souls to pleasure guarantees that our hearts and souls will be open to pain, too.

But wait, all is not lost.

The Shelter of Each Other

So there David (not only The Wonderful Husband but The Master Chef), Bernardo (our New Orleanian harpsichordist houseguest) and I were, cooking and cleaning for the Dinner Group to arrive at 6. Arrive they did, and since Bernardo was a guest, folks reminisced a little about the history of the group.

They've been meeting about once a month for 20 years. We've (I joined when I started dating The Wonderful Husband) help marry each other, bury parents, clear fallen trees, change jobs: in sickness and in health, for better and for worse. And celebrate it all with ambrosial food and aged wine.

Ultimate Diet: Losing the Weight of the World

So there I was, feeling reasonably sassy, having meditated, worked with clients I loved, walked in Carkeek park with a dear friend, and smooched with The Wonderful Husband.

Life was yummy until we turned on the MacNeill Lehrer News Hour.

My wellbeing went down in flames: Jobs lost. Polar caps melting. Corruption that would make a banana republic blush. I tried my usual sending of compassion to all the suffering folks on the news, but it didn't work. My sanity was down for the count.

I wanted to snarl at David and hurl a wrench at the screen. I wanted to throw dishes in the kitchen. I wanted to reach into the freezer for the carton of French Silk and eat myself into sweet chocolated oblivion amidst all the destruction. And then pass out until this whole damn mess is over.

Sisters, I'm here to tell you that there IS grace in this world: I took a deep breath and realized I had another choice: I could go sit by myself in my lovely office, and regain a tiny shred of composure.

I bid a hasty farewell to the chocolate (and David and the PBS folks) and snuggled in my favorite chair under the afghan my mom crocheted for me. And started Listening, as I'm learning to do this year as my practice.

Yikes! What did I hear inside my heart and soul? Something resembling sixteen radios full blast on different stations, ten toms caterwauling for midnight lovers, hundreds of babies screaming for breakfast, and the roar of an approaching tornado.

Not a pretty thing, sisters.

I wished I had earplugs for my inner ears.

What a mess. I couldn't find any shred of "me" in there at all.

I didn't know what to do with the cacophony but sit with it. Offer myself some compassion and kindness amid all that auditory suffering.

All I could get it down to that evening was a dull roar, but at least I wasn't going to go crazy. At least not that night.

The next morning I could "hear" myself again during my Listening time. There was grief and a shiver of anxiety inside, but it was mine, not the media's, and underneath it I could rest into a deeper peace and aliveness.

As I grew more aware that week of the racket the media makes not only "out there" but also in my heart and soul, I made two more discoveries:

1. When I get my own sweet frequency scrambled, I become just another source of white noise in our white-noisy world. When I start blaring static from my own inner radio K-F**K (as writer Annie Lamott calls it), I'm not helping me. And I'm certainly not helping anyone else.
2. The more I pay attention to the media, the crazier I feel. It's amazing. I go three days with no media, I'm fine: aware of suffering, doing whatever I can to help, but not crazy. One news show, or the front section of the morning paper, and I'm toast.

So, sisters, I'm on a diet. It's actually the most scrumptious diet I've ever done. It includes Dove chocolate, Tillamook ice cream, and Callard & Bowser Butterscotch.

Only one thing's restricted: the media.

See, this diet isn't about dropping pounds (though I'm not squawking if it does).

It's about losing the weight of the world.

I'm finding that the more I fast from the media, the lighter I travel. Doesn't mean I don't feel pain. It's just that when I do, it's my own, not someone else's. And traveling without all that extra weight means I can dance with my clients and friends and family more easily and gracefully.

I realize the diet will change from week to week. I also realize that, like all diets, it won't go on forever, only as long as it serves my health. Right now, I can eat my own version of media "dessert" - the Sunday New York Times - without putting the weight back on.

Caressing Your Sweet Spot

I probably don't need to be reminding you, sisters, how crazy and anxiety provoking the world is right now.

So I won't. But a wild thought came to me the other day, after lovemaking with The Wonderful Husband:

Wouldn't it be loverly to have the same kind of sweet spot in my heart as I do Down Under that I could caress, a way of lovemaking for my own heart and soul?

Stuff On My Cat

Have you ever visited www.StuffOnMyCat.com? If not, sashay on over for some great belly laughs.

You'll find cats buried in stickers, coat hangers, babies, action figures, post-its...you name it, some feline’s covered in it.

Even though I love the photos, I don’t need my bifocals to see that these cats are not happy campers, even with all their Stuff.

I looked like one of those cats when I was younger. I thought that pleasure was about The Stuff. You know the drill: I'll be totally happy when my life looks, metaphorically, like one of those inundated cats. Right house, right husband, right job, right kids, right car, right clothes...

Pleasure, Grief, and Eros

This week is my mother’s yahrzeit, the first anniversary of her death.

I’m crying a lot, at unexpected times: swimming up from a night dream in tears; seeing our Japanese maples fire up in all their fall glory; hearing my mom’s dusky voice while I’m driving on the freeway.

I thought I was done with the grief of her. I was wrong.

Don't Ask the Horse

You know, I thought I was doing fine handling all the stress of the last several months.

Then I had this phone conversation with my friend Alana. In her best girlfriend way (really, how would we ever make it without girlfriends?), she gently suggested that I was a TEENY bit stuck in whining mode.

She told me one of her favorite stories:

Down the road comes this horse, galloping very fast. It appears that the woman on the horse is going somewhere Really Important.

Another woman, standing alongside the road, shouts, “Where are you going?” The first woman, hanging on for dear life, shouts back, “I don’t know! Aaaask the horse!”

Whoa, I thought, in the silence after Alana finished the story. My horse is galloping 90 miles an hour. That horse — my anxieties, my stress, my grief for the world — is definitely in charge, and not exactly taking me home. And making me very cranky and frenetic in the process.

I thanked Alana for the story, and went and sat.

Just sat. Golden Indian summer sunlight filtered down through the Japanese maples in our garden. Kabobble the cat came and curled up on the top of the sofa next to me.

It was quiet, quiet, quiet. I started to quiet down. I realized I’d given the reins over to that horse. And I was the only one who could take them back. Or better yet, dismount.

I decided to take the next weekend, Friday through Sunday, as my own private spa/meditation retreat.

At home. Simple and easy.

I ran the details by The Husband — I’d only do those things that I’d do if I were staying at a retreat cottage somewhere, i.e., washing my own dishes — and let go of everything else. I’d have friendly, minimal contact with David, who could generally pretend I wasn’t there. David gave me a whole-hearted thumbs up (thank you, sweetheart!).

Thursday I went to Whole Foods and picked out three days of delicious deli food. I restocked my Pleasure Basket (What? You say you don’t have a Pleasure Basket by your bed? If not, read about it below this article). I pulled my car into the driveway and said goodbye to it until Monday.

And started my retreat.

Sisters, it was wayyy beyond heavenly. My intention was to reconnect with my own desires and internal rhythms. For three full days, I only did what I felt like, when I felt like it. I meditated. I slept. I read. I ate delicious, nourishing food (that includes chocolate). I did yoga, and plenty of nothing.

During a windstorm on Saturday I walked the wooded trail by my house that winds down to a Puget Sound beach. I stopped for a moment on the trail to look up, and saw hundreds of winged maple seed pods twirling down in the stiff wind. It was like the delight of looking up when it’s snowing, the sweet dizziness of watching flakes emerging from the great empty sky. Only this time, it was spinning samaras (that’s what David tells me they’re called), hundreds of them winging through space and time.

At that moment I knew I had dismounted. That galloping horse, bless its frenetic heart, had left me behind.

I strolled on to the beach and stood with the waves and wind for almost two hours, just being. A seal played in the waves, watching me. I watched back.

I got it that my just-right life, right now, would include a 3-day spa/meditation home retreat once a month, every month. I didn’t think I had the audacity to commit (who me? deserve that?), but I tucked it away as a possibility.

Watching the gulls ride the wind, I thought about how this play of designing a just-right life after 50 takes courage, a taste for improvising, and a sweet bucketload of curiosity. We’re making this up as we go along, sisters.

There’s no blueprint in this poor beleaguered world for living a life of love and pleasure, a life that makes our post-50 toes curl in delight. Ain’t nobody gonna give us permission to create such a life, so we might as well do it ourselves.

And with that I told the seal: Heck. Why the hell not. I am gonna do one 3-day home retreat a month, for as long as my body and soul call for it.

I think the seal smiled.

The next day, snuggled under my comforter on the couch, I read a great line in Life Is A Verb (highly recommended): “The American Revolution was not financed with matching grants from the Crown.”

Woo-hoo! We don’t have to wait for an Official Sanction to live our best, just-right lives. So why not start, right now, this very moment?

* * *

Here it is, Monday morning, and I’m back. And with a lot more to offer other folks in this challenging time, from a place of sweet gratefulness.

The horse, the galloping-fast-to-nowhere-horse, still isn’t here. God knows where she’s gone.

She’ll return, given the present insanity of the world. But when I do get back on that horse (and I’m about 100% sure I will), I know how to dismount once again.

Hey — if you see me careening by, hanging on for dear life, please don’t ask the horse where I’m going.

Lights On, Sisters

Marie, a subscriber, writes, "Does 'lit-up' mean being manically supercharged? If so, forget it. I'm not a Christmas tree."

Thank you, Marie, and thank all the heavens that we're at an age where we can say what we mean!

Being lit up isn't reciting affirmations ad nauseum or pumping yourself with positivity. Lights-on experiences are more candlelight glow than Las Vegas neon. For yours truly, lying in bed with cats and husband, listening to David read aloud...Bare hands in rich, loamy dirt, creating beauty in my garden, blissfully alone with robins, roses, and the wind...Swoon-worthy food and wine, and delicious conviviality with our monthly dinner group...

Here's the kicker: what lights you up lights up the world. One of my favorite quotes is from Buddhist scholar Howard Thurman: "Don't ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive and then go do that. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive."

Marie, a subscriber, writes, "Does 'lit-up' mean being manically supercharged? If so, forget it. I'm not a Christmas tree."

Thank you, Marie, and thank all the heavens that we're at an age where we can say what we mean!

Being lit up isn't reciting affirmations ad nauseum or pumping yourself with positivity. Lights-on experiences are more candlelight glow than Las Vegas neon. For yours truly, lying in bed with cats and husband, listening to David read aloud...Bare hands in rich, loamy dirt, creating beauty in my garden, blissfully alone with robins, roses, and the wind...Swoon-worthy food and wine, and delicious conviviality with our monthly dinner group...

Here's the kicker: what lights you up lights up the world. One of my favorite quotes is from Buddhist scholar Howard Thurman: "Don't ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive and then go do that. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive."