The Grace of Change

What Doesn't Change, In Change

This is one of my favorite poems to read aloud toward the end of a retreat on big life transitions...

...mmm, I love the hushed and fertile quiet of a group of women listening deeply, with the ears of their hearts, to a good poem.

In a big transition, so much of what we "knew" about the world — our assumptions and beliefs about ourselves, about life, about relationships and others — goes away, never to return again. Given this, it is life-giving to reflect on what doesn't change, that thread you follow no matter what:

THE WAY IT IS

There's a thread you follow. It goes among
things that change. But it doesn't change.
People wonder about what you are pursuing.
You have to explain about the thread.
But it is hard for others to see.
While you hold it you can't get lost.
Tragedies happen; people get hurt
or die; and you suffer and get old.
Nothing you do can stop time's unfolding.
You don't ever let go of the thread.

~ William Stafford

So what is your thread that you don't let go of, despite changes and how hard it might be for others to see? How does it keep you from getting completely lost?

Your Big Yes

NOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

This aliveness is what’s most important to me, and what I most wish — from the very core of my being — for us all.

I don’t know about you, but I regress to toddlerhood when my life falls apart. Those times when the cherished whatever that defines me and gives my life meaning — healthy body, interesting work, kids at home, relationship with someone I love — falls away, usually wrested from my fist tightly wrapped around said cherished whatever.

Noooooooooooo, I say to life/God: no, you can’t have this, it’s MINE. Nooooooooooo, this CAN’T be my life. My life, my good life, my best life, HAS to have (fill in the blank: health, wealth, primary partnership, your own cherished whatever).

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Oh lordy. This primal NO sucks the juice right out of me. It obliterates both the “wild” and the “precious” from my wild and precious life.

Enter the Big Yes: the no-holds-barred Yes to your own life, with or without your cherished whatevers.

Your Big Yes doesn’t depend on your health, your bank account, or your age.

The Path Is Made by Walking

David - aka The Wonderful Husband - gave me a necklace several years ago with the first lines of this poem inscribed on 2 rings, one silver, one brass: "Traveler, there is no path/the path is made by walking."

Isn't that what a big-ass life transition is about? No pre-made road, trail, highway. Nada.

I had a Big Dream several decades ago in the middle of one of those times of everything falling away. In the dream, I wanted to get to Phoenix (!) as quickly as I could. I tried getting on the freeway, but the on ramp was broken. Damn. I wanted to get there asap.

My only other alternative was to set out across the desert. I picked up a bike by the side of the road and started hoofing it. Suddenly, my way was blocked by a very old, very wise man. He told me to get off the bike, take off my shoes, and just start walking across the desert to Phoenix. He seemed kind, but not the kind of guy you disagree with. I wondered how the hell I was ever going to get there, wherever "there" was.

No other options, though, so I started walking. The old man called out to me and told me to look down at the ground. The ochre desert earth was, to my astonishment, littered with uncut gems.

Don't you hate it when dreams are just so blatantly obvious?

That dream has stayed with me for almost 30 years. It's part of my bones now, the matrix of my soul. I'm thinking about that dream, and this poem, as I begin to write again. Don't know where I'm going, but Machado reminds me that I don't have to fret too much about it. The path is made by walking.

Proverbios y Cantares XXIX

Wayfarer, the only way
is your footsteps, there is no other.
 
Wayfarer, there is no way,
you make the way by walking.
As you go, you make the way
and stopping to look behind,
you see the path that your feet
will never travel again.
 
Wayfarer, there is no way -
Only foam trails to the sea.
 
~ Antonio Machado ~ 
 (Translated by A. Trueblood)

Life Is A Garden, Not A Road

So here's something to chew on:

What if life is a garden, as this poem says, and not a road? What does that say about the directionality we all assume about our lives? I, for one, sure behave differently in a garden than on a road. Makes me realize how imbedded that Western notion of "going somewhere" is in this heart and mind.

I'm planning to play with this for the next while - anyone care to join me?

life is a garden,

not a road

 

we enter and exit

through the same gate

 

wandering,

where we go matters less

than what we notice

 

~ Bokonon ~

 (The Lost Book)

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.

Lost

Oh lordy, this is in my top ten favorite poems of all times. The backstory is that Wagoner created this poem around some instructions a Pacific Northwest Native American (can remember which tribe right now) elder gave to a young man heading out into wilderness on his adolescent rite of passage.

I love "Lost" so much I've almost-memorized it at least 3 or 4 times.

Did I say how much I love this poem? I've been lost so many times. How reassuring to know that TRULY getting lost just can't happen if we breathe, and trust the ground we're standing on.

Lost
 
Stand still. The trees ahead and bushes beside you
Are not lost. Wherever you are is called Here,
And you must treat it as a powerful stranger,
Must ask permission to know it and be known.
The forest breathes. Listen. It answers,
I have made this place around you,
If you leave it you may come back again, saying Here.
No two trees are the same to Raven.
No two branches are the same to Wren.
If what a tree or a bush does is lost on you,
You are surely lost. Stand still. The forest knows
Where you are. You must let it find you.
 
~ David Wagoner ~

 (Riverbed)

Want the Change

Nothing I can say about this poem that the poem doesn't say better ;-)

Sonnets to Orpheus, Part Two, XII

 

Want the change.  Be inspired by the flame
where everything shines as it disappears.
The artist, when sketching, loves nothing so much
as the curve of the body as it turns away.

 

What locks itself in sameness has congealed.
Is it safer to be gray and numb?
What turns hard becomes rigid
and is easily shattered.

 

Pour yourself out like a fountain.
Flow into the knowledge that what you are seeking
finishes often at the start, and, with ending, begins.

 

Every happiness is the child of a separation
it did not think it could survive.  And Daphne, becoming
a laurel,
dares you to become the wind.

 

~ Rainer Maria Rilke ~
 (In Praise of Mortality, translated and edited by Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy)

Meditating with Chocolate

So here we are with Valentine’s Day chocolate erupting everywhere, and you’re wondering how to sashay that fine line between deprivation (ick!) and overindulgence.

Have I got a treat for you! Here’s a way of – get this – meditating with chocolate. Ladies, how good can that get?

The exercise — or play, as I like to think of it — is to develop mindfulness, awareness of the present moment without judgment. Mindfulness is one of the cornerstones of pleasure, deepening our capacity for it in all its forms. After all, if we’re stressing about the meeting tomorrow, or beating ourselves up for forgetting to return that phone call, how can we relish the grace and pleasure of this moment?

Mindfulness is traditionally developed through meditation. I say, how about developing mindfulness and cultivating pleasure at the same great time?

Pleasures Not Taken

"When you die, God and the angels will hold you accountable for all the pleasures you were allowed in life that you denied yourself." ~the Talmud

Wednesday night, The Husband’s art night. David signed up for an intro to drawing class this quarter and has had a gas going. It’s something I’ve been encouraging him to do for a long time.

When he returns I ooh and ahhh at his gesture drawings. But wait...while one side of me is genuinely delighted, the other side feels...what?... resentful, martyred, and snitty.

One Minute for Pleasure

Anita, a participant in a midlife workshop I led, wailed, “I’m too tired and stressed to do stress reduction!” Sisters, I wish you could have been in that room-you know when someone says something that everyone is thinking, but no one wants to say it out loud?
You could have heard that proverbial pin drop.