Month: April 2015

American Crow, Singing Sands, Bruce Peninsula National Park, Ontario, Canada – 6, 2007

 
The crow yells orders to the city birds:
“this is my place, my space!”
Isn’t the call of the crow our call, too?

Sometimes in the afternoon sun leaves fly and feathers, too, whole trees shake with the anger of the crows:

“this is my place, my space – I am taking my space!”

Isn’t this our call, too?

All over the world, crows are calling this morning, each morning, on and on into dusk:

“this is my place, my space – I am taking my space!”

Flapping its wings, shaking  leaves, bellowing over city streets,                                                  crow calls:

“I am taking my space!”

meb/4/2015

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Don’t we all take up space, want our space, as children of the creation/creator?  Isn’t that why people all over the world are calling in the streets – like the crows?

It’s easy to be grateful when things are going well.  These days, it’s common to hear folks say:  “I am blessed,” when the list of positive things, things they feel good about, makes their life feel abundant and makes them feel rich, rich in blessings.  It’s harder to be grateful when things are not as good, when we are feeling down, when the blessings we have are not nearly as apparent, to us.

I’ve always loved the New Testament verse:  “Be joyful always, pray at all times, give thanks in all circumstances.”  Years ago, I read Corrie ten Boom’s account of the years she spent in a concentration camp in Europe.  She kept herself – her spirit alive – by living out those words.  Sometimes I remind myself of that verse, to get through a day.

This morning as I write these words, the people of Nepal are digging themselves and each other out from the rubble of a major earthquake that has devastated the country.  On Mount Everest, climbers who survived the quake are scouring through the debris to find friends, other adventurers.  Internet access is limited, and so people are finding ways to let their families know they have survived – so far.  As I sit here in my sunlit basement office, I am in luxury.  I listened this morning to the accounts of survivors on the BBC news.  A mother sits with her children, grateful to be alive, wondering how they will yet survive.  Aftershocks shake the country.  How will she feed her children?

I am deliberate about making time and space in my privileged life here in the West for those people around the globe – and not far from here – whose lives are not as privileged.  I think of it as part of my world citizenship to remember the lives of people who are struggling for food, for water, for shelter, for safety.  Since news travels so quickly around this planet earth, we hear the stories so much more quickly, and so much more vividly, it seems.  I am deliberate because I want to remember that my life is richer than most human beings can imagine.  My access to food, to water – even in this drought in Northern California – to basic, basic necessities, is simply a part of the way I live, and the way I expect to live.  How can I pray for these people?  Is there a way, by changing my/our lives here, I can effect change?

And what does it mean to “give thanks in all circumstances” in my life’s conditions?

Years ago, I read about a man whose life was full.  Educated and successful, he and his family had a beautiful home.  His children were beautiful, well-educated, and successful.  He had everything he needed or desired, it seemed.  Every day, he would say:  “I am blessed.”  One day, one of his beautiful daughters left for a trip to India.  On her arrival, she called her father to check in.  The next day, she was gone – murdered.

From that day forward, as her father and her family made that long and arduous and lonely and necessary journey to grieve  her loss, her father contemplated what it really meant to him to be “blessed.”  What did blessing mean now, in the face of this unimaginable, unnecessary loss?  Would he ever be able to say again, “I am so blessed?”

That is a question for us all.  I know – through my own years of learning to pray (we are always a beginner at such things, I think) – that so many of our days are not good days, or happy days, or days filled with all we want and desire.  Many of our days – if we are honest, and if we choose to live our lives to the fullest – are filled with loss, with unfilled desires, with disappointments, with sadness, some of which will never end.  What does it mean to say:  “I am grateful,” in those days?

I am grateful to be alive.  I am grateful for my one journey.  I am grateful for the beauty of each day.  I am grateful for food on the table, for the privilege I have as an educated white person in this society.  I am grateful for long, enduring friendships – in spite of me, I think.  I am grateful for the family I had in my life – as dysfunctional as any family, but still, a family in which there was love.  I am grateful for my partner in life.

I have been challenged, as we all are, by the changing winds of life.  Life is hard for any one, any where on the planet.  I can’t compare my own challenges to the people I have on my mind today, in Nepal.  It is hard to be a human being, invested with this life.

And so, in my own feeble practice, I try to give thanks, every day.  For awhile, I wrote a note of thanks to God, to the Universe, to Life, on a little sheet of paper every day, and put it in a drawer I had emptied for the purpose of holding my gratitude.  Now, I simply try to be grateful.  I have had moments when I have given thanks – did I feel grateful then? – in the midst of some crises of my mind or spirit.  That, as I said, is my practice.  Today, it is easy.  Some days, it is not.

I stay away from saying I am blessed.  That doesn’t work for me.  Why am I blessed?  Why is someone else not blessed?  Who is to say?  What does it mean, really?  I like to stay with the tide of life, the ups and downs, and I like to be grateful, when I can.

This is my practice.  And for that, for the abundant, privileged ability at all to think on these things, to reflect on life, I am grateful, for now, for this moment.  I hope you can be, just for a moment, also.

We ask little children this:  “who’s a big boy?”  The reality is that we are all big, our energy is big, we are larger than our bodies – and much, much – much! – larger than our minds!

Eastern medicine follows the precept that energy follows attention.  Can we apply that to our ordinary, everyday lives?  I think we can!

Most of the time, our energy is scattered.  When we follow the wanderings of our minds, that is completely true.  Our minds wander from one thought to the next, one judgement to the next, one “brilliant” idea to the next.  One day, for practice, intend to watch/observe the wanderings of your mind.  You will have to do this when you are silent and when someone else is not speaking to you.  Pay attention to your thoughts.  This practice alone may surprise you – you will find yourself making judgements, mental comments, about everything you see.  If you really pay attention, you will notice that it is easy for your mind to wander off, to not stay in one place, with one thought, one judgement.  The mind is busy.  The mind keeps moving along.  That’s what it does.

It is also easy, if you are only interested in what you think, to not be completely whole.  This idea in itself is counter-cultural.  We are a culture consumed with words, our own words, the words of others, important words, more and more important words.

(You may want to return to my post:  ‘don’t believe everything you think.’)…

But we are more than the wanderings of our minds.  We are so much greater than the wanderings of our minds.  We are energy, completely energy.  We are made of the stuff of the universe, the stuff of stars, the stuff of time and space and earth and light.  We are so much more than the wanderings of our minds.

Pay attention, today, to the movement of your body through time and space.  Notice.  Notice when your breathing deepens.  Notice the moments when you hold your breath.  Notice the feelings in your body.  When you walk, do you feel as if you are walking solidly on the earth?  Smell your surroundings.  You are a sentient being, a being of feelings, of sense, of physical sensation.  When you pay attention, you begin to experience yourself as a being of sensation.

Many years ago, I was privileged to be friends with a Zen Master, a man then in his 70’s, who was the teacher for a small group of pilgrims in a small city outside the bounds of the Bay Area in California.  In conversations with my friend, I always learned something new, something that opened my world.  One day as we sat together at lunch, we were talking about our minds (go figure how the conversation came to that!).  He asked me a simple question:  can you think outside of your mind?

I tried!  For a moment, I went into that image and word-filled space that I inhabited.  Could I think outside of my mind (whatever “my mind” is!)?  I came back to the present moment shortly:  “well, I tried,” I said to him.  Our minds, no matter how brilliant we are, how well educated we are, how well trained we are, are limited.  Are our minds limited by the constraints of our thinking?  I’m not sure – are you?  Do our minds expand?  I’m not sure – are you?  Is there always room for more in our minds?  I’m not sure -are you?

All I know now, is that we are so much more than our minds.  We are limitless, sentient, boundless, energetic beings.  Some say we are beings of light.  However you say it, however you choose to frame it, you are so much more than your thinking thinks you are.

Just how big are you?

“On a beautiful sunny day, you look up into the sky and see a nice, puffy cloud floating through. You admire its shape, the way the light falls upon its many folds and the shadow it casts on the green field. You fall in love with this cloud. You want it to stay with you and keep you happy. But then the shape and color change. More clouds join with it, the sky becomes dark, and it begins to rain. The cloud is no longer apparent to you. It has become rain. You begin to cry for the return of your beloved cloud.
You would not cry if you knew that by looking deeply into the rain you would still see the cloud.”

Excerpt From: Thich Nhat Hanh. “No Death, No Fear.” Penguin, 2002.

I have these moments, too, do you?  These moments when you see through what you ordinarily see into some space or time or place that is there all along, and mostly unseen.   “You fall in love with this cloud.”

Yesterday evening, I fell in love with the little bit of western sky I can see through the late spring leaves on the tree I love, and live with, on my front lawn.  For a few moments, I was completely grateful for  the bright red streak of sky that lingered behind the branches of the tree, across the street, across the Bay… I didn’t want to take my eyes off the scene, because I knew it would be gone in a breath.  My husband had his back to the splendor, and so I had him sit on the couch next to the window, to see what I was seeing.  Ahhh…

These moments, these precious, precious moments of life as a sentient being are so fleeting, each moment here and gone, here and gone.  And it is possible – although I forget about it, although I am so often preoccupied with the thoughts going around inside of my head, although I am often bothered by a feeling that seems to linger – to be here, now, to witness each moment, each fleeting moment of a cloud that has formed and is forming and will be, forever forming, and to fall in love.

Thich Nhat Hanh goes further in his thoughts, though.  He invites us to know, to honor, to remember those moments when we establish a relationship with another part of this vast and wonderful creation, and we honor its life, its life force, its reality, its ever-ness.  What we know in our hearts will never be taken from us.  What we love is and will always be part of us, with us, in us.  The cloud is us, I am sure Thich Nhat Hanh would say.  What is beloved is never lost.  In our human-ness, we love when and how we can, but the connection continues, forever.

The “cloud-ness” of the cloud will never end, even as what we see evaporates before our eyes.

And isn’t that true of each moment?  Isn’t each moment, that brief moment in time, holy and whole, and isn’t it with us, even as it passes?  Isn’t it true that some moments you will see and feel and hear and know forever, although they have passed?  And they are in you, with you, they are you, and you are those moments…

How completely alive we would be if we were awake enough to fall completely, hopelessly, effortlessly in love with each moment!

As for the tears when the moment passes, when our beloved passes from our lives, when the little ones grow too soon, when a friend leaves or goes away, they are part of us, too.  Tears in a way, honor the one we love.  And then, the tears pass, too.

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