-- a journey into awareness
You walk around the house
half the things you touch
are his
His toothbrushes
His clothes
His coffee mug
You think about moving
these things on
And the thought
Comes,
“but he might
need them”
And you remember
he’s lying
In hospice
He won’t need them.
He’s not coming
home, at least
Not to this home. The
one you can’t imagine
without him.
You throw the toothbrush
out, a first step, a baby step,
In the daunting tasks to come.
Different identities
They rise up
There’s the fearful one
The controller
The loyal wife
The caretaker
All reactive
Ego driven
The Observer
says “return to
Center, sit in silence,
Listen”
So who’s Dying here
Who’s letting go?
His life ebbs
But mine is torn
Stripped as
mini deaths
Force me to Truth
His life, God’s life
One life, our life
It directs us,
guides us
If we Listen
How to stay in that
Knowing that flow
Is this my lesson?
His gift to me
Even as he lies there
dying?
Hovering…
What can I do
to protect you?
I see suffering
My fault
I’m not enough.
God’s. Plan?
Lost the bigger
picture…it’s too
much to bear
Find Center
Find peace
Go to the silence
for solace
I feel fear
of what?
Failing.
Can’t understand him
How can I help?
Not in control
Done everything I
knew how to do
Not enough
I’m not enough
What learning
is there in this.
Keeps you humble
The nurse said
Not my strong suit.
Dealing with death brings all the feelings, beliefs, fears to the surface. I try to witness them. No need to console me…it’s already changed. I’ve moved to a new “now”.
The fall happened,
pain seared through
the already injured
shoulder, another skin tear.
The world shifted.
Is this it, the unsteadiness
the weakness
the pain?
But dawn came.
There’s a follow-up with
the chiropractor
this morning, perfect!
The skin tear, we’re out
anyway, let’s visit the
Wound Doctor
on the way home.
He finds the blood blister
we’ve been ignoring.
Necrotic he says.
WHAT?
Without the fall
without that shoulder visit
without that skin tear
we’d not have known.
An angel tripped him.
led us along to find the
perfect help before it was
too late.
Wow!
I am reminded how we are being helped, not always in the way we expect. But, always moving us, blessing us. Like the parable of the Chinese farmer, you can’t judge an event without knowing the whole picture. The one we never have at the moment. Good comes from the terrible. Just when we think we’ve got it made, something happens.
We’re on the roller coaster of life, to judge is to add suffering to the ride. In stead we could stay in the “wow” as Ram Dass recently said. Wow, look at this! I wonder what’s next?
I’m noticing my windows need cleaning…
the sun will do that to you.
We crave the light only to find
dust bunnies under the table.
There’s always something
pulling you out of joy.
Noticing turns into
a “to do” list,
or an irritant, how
it should be different.
The mind
having free rein
drags you
into perpetual
discontent, blind to
life’s magic.
Reverse course
Let wonder humble you
See with curiosity.
Get yourself lost,
make love, be intimate
with what’s around you.
Engage the world always
for the first time.
“Maybe it doesn’t want to be identified.”
from The New Yorker Jan. 9, 2017
Maybe, just maybe, “it” doesn’t want to be identified because once it is, people stop paying attention.
“Oh, just a robin.”
We all yearn to be seen and understood. Yet too often, once we “identify” someone or something as being a certain way, we stop paying attention. We never really see them again, blind to who they are now. We see what we expect to see. We stop being curious.
True, we come by labeling legitimately. Identifying things and making distinctions have been key to surviving: knowing a poisonous mushroom from a morel ; a copperhead from a harmless garter snake, a stranger from a member of your tribe. It’s how primitive man (and woman) lived long enough to discover the world. An unidentified difference equaled a perceived threat until someone, brave enough, curious enough, got to know it.
Practically, the ability to identify something also means we don’t have to think about everything all the time. “I know [fill in the blank]. It’s OK.” It’s the practical side of stereotyping. You don’t have to start from scratch. You draw on your experience, cultural norms, what you’ve been taught. You can build up a “that is safe” pile. But then, by default, you also have a “that is dangerous” pile you tend to fear.
So what’s the downside? Our preconceived notions limit our experience of the world, as well as our experience of people.
When labels or how we identify something becomes the primary mode of interacting, we stop experiencing life. You see what you remember as being there, what you think should be there: the uniqueness and diversity within groups is missed, change unnoticed, exceptions dismissed if seen at all.
So yes, “that’s a robin.” But maybe it doesn’t want to be identified, categorized, put in a box. 
Try getting curious. Let yourself be surprised. Notice, what’s different about this robin.
In relationship you experience life!
Warning: Written after reading about, and pondering, Trump’s draft on defining religious freedom. This post is blasphemous. It may offend you. Don’t read it. I just have to write it.
Sometimes I think the human species is like a fetus: full of potential. But, if the Life that holds it decides, it can be ended.
Like spoiled children we will fight to the death over our special knowing of God and His truth. We cannot conceive of a God bigger than our own religion, our own experience; it’s too scary. We have to be right, others have to be wrong. Complexity makes us uneasy, angry even.
We’ve grown in technology, our economy has spread across oceans, our science has discovered constellations and black holes….yet, we cling to our small notion of God. He couldn’t have blessed the Christian, the Buddhist, the Hindu, and of course not the Muslim, right? And the traditions of Native Indians? Well they were primitive, and in the wrong place at the wrong time.
We hold to the belief that there is only one path to God. And that path is, of course, through our particular Savior, Prophet, Enlightened One. We can’t even consider that God might delight in being discovered in a temple, in an ashram, a cathedral, a mosque or even just in silence. We can’t consider the possibility that He can send His Son with no intention of setting Him up in competition with Buddha. We forget that all of life, all over the globe is His creation. Our God is small….
We’re not content to live our beliefs. We must convince others they are wrong. And if they don’t agree, force them…through law, through domination. When religion marries government, it can only go off. A sign the fruits of our beliefs are so weak, living them is not enough. God’s justice is not enough. We must intervene.
Abortion is the hot button. Murder! Yet we manage to put it in a different category than all the other life/death choices made. Choices made according to the criteria we’ve determined are right: collateral damage happens; who gets the kidney; when profit is more important then clean water/air. We have fought righteous wars over sugar, land, oil. We argue over whether should there be a death penalty. We eat meat because we can (we’ve dominion over them). God evidently set it up so we’d have to make choices, deal with gray areas. We don’t like it.
I think it’s why we focus so determinedly on abortion. Here we can be self righteous in our interpretation of “Thou shalt not kill.” It’s emotional – a baby after all (or a potential baby). In it’s defense, we can put aside the times when we’ve made trade-offs about which life matters most. In a world that is complex and messy, maybe we need to grab onto something that doesn’t immediately affect us. It’s a relief to focus on someone else’s womb, someone else’s choice.
I realize the irony of this post, pushing my beliefs in the name of Truth, as others do theirs. People I respect, who are sincere in their beliefs. People who don’t believe we can coexist: that someone has to win, one religion and it’s laws dominate. I hope they are wrong.
In the meantime, be true to yourself. I know I will.
Words always compromise the experience we’re having. But we try anyway.
What is being present: now, today? What is being aware, awake, fully alive? How do you experience it? What does all this mean in difficult times anyway?
TODAY’S THE DAY
Cheers erupt
in triumph.
Tears fall
in disappointment.
Fears hover in the
shadow of what’s to come.
But I feel a place
of stillness, just
Spacious Stillness.
From here I know
love in action.
From here I know
it’s only in our
wandering off
that we forget
we’re connected.
Mirrors for each other,
loved by the very Universe
we’re scared of.
Loved beyond our possessions,
successes, our failures.
Hell is not being crucified!
Jesus died in love,
connecting and forgiving.
He died showing us
how to live…
no matter what…
It’s all about the Love
you are, the Love that you can share.
the Love that’s beyond understanding.
Peace!
For a while, I haven’t written. I wondered why. Nothing seemed compelling enough to write about. OK, actually no ideas were coming at all.
Rilke wrote in Letters to a Young Poet, “Go into yourself. Search for the reason that bids you write…ask yourself…must I write?”
Elizabeth Gilbert in Big Magic, writes, “Ideas are a disembodied, energetic life-form…driven by a single impulse: to be made manifest. And the only way an idea can be made manifest in our world is through collaboration with a human partner.” p. 64 She goes on to say, you can say “no” when an idea comes, but it will move on to someone else.
So I waited, trying to be alert to what might offer itself to me. One morning, the words started to come. I understood, at least for me, my writing. And, I started letting it happen.
WRITING
You write where you are
Not where you are forever,
Just where you are
in this nanosecond.
Words flow through, Spirit, waiting to play.
To give voice to the words
that comes through you.
Traveling fast, as if sent
urgently from a distant place.
The ones that pay a surprise visit
as you’re about to fall asleep; the ones
urging you to write them down, to
hold them to a page so they can’t fly off.
Sometimes you think them
too bold for print, you fear
what others might say.
Still, you write the words.
A understanding, a phrase…
not for forever, just for right now
for this nanosecond
for this poem.
besliter, January, 2017