Rejoice!

A young seminarian spoke at services this morning, and she called on a scriptural passage that included that there had been rejoicing.  She explored how often in scripture that we read what is around the rejoicing, but don't really consider that the rejoicing itself is as important.

Leaving the church in downtown DC in the middle of the "peak" weekend of the Cherry Blossom Festival, I couldn't help but think of her words as I looked at nature rejoicing around me.  I wish I knew the names of all of the blooming trees and bushes, but suffice it to say, they were exploding in a range of whites and pinks, accented by the yellow of forsythia all about.  I stopped and chatted with a homeless "friend" after leaving the Metro, and as the warmth of the sun bathed us, we talked about how wonderful the singing of all the birds.

Those who have read this blog for a while know how excited I get when nature produces splendid displays.  Astrologically, I am an earth sign.  I don't follow astrology all that much, but I wonder if that is why I am so impacted by nature.  I know there is nothing that makes me feel closer to God than one of these explosions of nature.

Today, I can't help but wonder whether rejoicing with nature isn't similar to the scriptural references to rejoicing.  We get caught up in whatever is happening on stage and totally miss the splendor of the sets the establish the tone for our lives.  I am going to be very intentional this season about letting all the "stuff" that is going on in my life be less important and allowing the rejoicing of nature around me be what is truly important.

Working empty

Last week I did good work with a leadership team.  They learned a lot, both about material I presented and about themselves, individually and as a team.  It was "good" work--not "great" work.  Certainly not "inspired" work. 

I used to do a lot of "inspired" work.  I showed up.  Before others arrived, I meditated and prayed to "empty" myself.  I asked to be an instrument of God's love.  When people arrived, I worked with them.  What they brought up was the agenda.  They inevitably led me to questions which took us to where the work needed to occur.  Oh, I'd done work before the event.  Usually, I'd interviewed participants and often attended a few of their meetings, but the most important thing I brought to the session was my emptiness.

That was all when I was self-employed.  I was free to be empty, and I was free to be "inspired."
Then I went to work for other employers.  First it was for consulting firms, and then I became a federal government civil servant.  Deliverables and expectations about what those demanded drove my work.  A PowerPoint deck was mandatory, and planned activities were essential.  Workbooks were necessary.  Every minute needed to be planned for and scripted.  Soon the charade started feeling like training and very little like OD.  Every inch of the emptiness was full, and I went from doing "inspired" work to orchestrating "good" work.

The proscription in medicine is to "do no harm."  "Do no harm" is implicit in organization development as well.  I don't think I've ever harmed any person or group. As the world of delivering to expectations drove me though, "doing no harm" became the necessity rather than "healing."

Lyricist and philosopher John Lennon wrote, "Love is all there is."  When I did "inspired" work, knowing that love was all there is was my compass--my true north.  If I emptied myself and held a room in love, the truth of all the things that separated them from love just bubbled up.

At last it is spring.  For Christians, Easter marks a time of rebirth.  Jews remember the passage from slavery to freedom and a new life under God's guidance.  Everywhere people see new birth of animals and plants as the days grow longer.  Amidst all that clutters our lives over the months during which nature passes through its cycles is love.

Now at the time of rebirth, we have time to blow it all away and remember that whatever we do and wherever we go "love is all there is."  If we will let it, all the other stuff will fill us with illusions of what is.  Our job is to empty ourselves and allow love to drive whatever we do.

Rebirth

Last Wednesday marked the beginning of Lent--the 40 days prior to Easter--for Christians. Observers give up substances, foods, or activities that separate them from God.  They also spend time in reflection and sacred study.  The idea is to examine our lives--to learn what it means for each of us to be more Godlike, arriving at the holiest of Christian holidays ready to metaphorically start our lives anew.

Sadly, many miss the purpose.  "I'll give up smoking for Lent."

"I didn't know you smoked."

"Oh, I don't, so it will be easy to give up."

Lent isn't supposed to be easy.  It is supposed to be an annual reset, moving us to our higher selves. While Lent is a Christian practice, it is not unique.  Jews mark Passover, which commemorates their escape from bondage in Egypt to return to freedom in God's promised land for them.  Lent mirrors as we escape our bondage to bad habits in order to find our way to God's promise for us.

Although each is unique to its culture, the practice of marking the seasonal spring with observance of human rebirth is millennia old.  Some may say that Lent isn't a lot different than marking the New Year and New Year's Resolutions, but to me it contrasts starkly, not the least of which is that many New Year's Resolutions are forgotten within the day.  In Lent I am pledged to practice for 40 days.

"Practice" is the appropriate word.  "Discipline" might be another, signifying that we are disciples or students.  Lent is also marked by the personal reflection, which for me is a bit like peeling an onion. Each day I, the student, explore a different layer.

For many years, I have given up sugar for Lent.  I am seriously addicted, and nothing distracts me more from my God-self than sugar.  Giving up sugar (and consequently alcohol) is a no-brainer for me.  Each year for a few days, I experience cravings and even shakes as I give up sugar, but by now, five days into Lent, I am feeling the freedom of having it out of my system.

A couple days ago I actually began to crave exercise instead, and yesterday I ventured out in the cold and snow for a long walk.  I loved it.  My body loved it more.  This morning I walked again, although I did so indoors to avoid the treacherous sleet-encrusted sidewalks of Washington. After a lunch that reflected my healthier eating habits, I actually sat and read.   Then I wanted to meditate, which brought me to writing today.  As if each good habit naturally led to consciousness of yet another and another.

My meditation did more than return me to my computer to write.  I found myself questioning what I spend time on and the level of stress I experience from trying to keep so many balls in the air.  I actually laughed when I thought of forgetting to bring an activity sheet to a presentation I gave on Thursday.  Although I expect I will be harshly judged for this oversight, it wasn't the end of the world, and we were able to complete the activity in another way.  By contrast, letting exercise drop off my schedule for much of the week has had significant long- and short-term consequences.

I'd like to think that I will arrive at Easter pledged to really have learned and practiced my more conscious way of living so that I really will have a rebirth.  History indicates that will not be the case. I've actually continued without sugar until my birthday in May one year and all the way until Christmas another, but there is always a piece of chocolate tantalizing me.

But, what if this year, I actually did allow myself to live my truth?  Would staying off of sugar be like the domino that didn't fall and knock the others down? Would I keep exercising and meditating? Would I write this blog more regularly again? Would I be more like God envisions my potential?

That truly would be the potential of rebirth.

Prickly

I started the day angry. I woke up 50 minutes early, which might not be such a bad thing except that I was very tired.  I made the decision to go to bed 50 minutes early to get much needed sleep.  Then I woke up 50 minutes early and realized that I haven't gained any ground.  I thought I would just roll over and go back to sleep and get the extra rest I needed.  Not!  My head was spinning.

First, I had a painful thought that I'd been a little short with a colleague yesterday afternoon.  She is the best person I've ever worked with, so she should be the last person I'd be short with, but I was.  Why did I do that?  Yes, why? 

I've been feeling prickly lately.  One perspective of spiritual growth uses the snake as a metaphor.  I know that is almost the antithesis of the Abrahamic traditions, which conceive the serpent as the symbol of the fall-from-grace of humankind--the reason Adam and Eve were expelled from the Garden of Eden, but the metaphor really does work.

When a snake grows, it outgrows its skin.  Every spurt of growth requires a new skin. The too-small skin must be shed before a new, larger one can take its place.  During the transition period, the flesh of the snake is tender until it "toughens up," and the animal is easily agitated because of the physical discomfort.

By that metaphor, life is a succession of growth--> shed skin--> discomfort-->comfort-->growth...etc.

Using the snake metaphor implies growing into a new skin results in "feeling prickly" for a while to facilitate spiritual growth to the next level.  I hope that my prickliness at my colleague really does mean that I am growing, but it feels like just the opposite.

My current job requires about 1/1000 of my capability; I am capable of so much more.  I am bored.  When I have sought to use more of my capacity, I've been thrown work that is even less challenging.  I wouldn't feel so bad if there weren't a need, but there is...everywhere. 

As I look out of my apartment to the fresh green of budding trees, I am once again reminded of growth and moving forward in time, signaled by the changing of the seasons.  I love to learn, and I love to grow.  I realize that unlike the trees in the park, I have not been learning, growing, and changing.  I am taking a couple of classes, but they will allow me to receive credentials for material I already know.  I believe what I  need is something to learn, something that will allow me to grow.  Maybe my prickliness is the result of stagnation.

For most of my life, my growth has been around my work, but clearly the current environment at my workplace isn't hospitable to that.  So, I am going to look around me for opportunities to grow elsewhere in my life. I recall being energized with some art history courses that I took a few years ago. I am certain that I can find something that will break me out of my current skin, and I am betting that, even if I do have a "new tender skin," I will feel less prickly in no time.

Life's Little Miracles

Today I visited my balcony again, and, quite to my surprise, bulbs are shooting up everywhere. Where there were none yesterday, one was five inches high. I should have been able to see it growing if I'd been watching carefully. Many other shoots had burst through the soil as well, boldly forcing winter to yield to spring.

Intellectually, I knew this would happen; something similar occurs every year about this time. Yet every time it is a miracle unfolding before my eyes. My mind--my memory--cannot capture and recall the true wonder of it all. The best I can do is some kind of single-dimensional, black and white version of a 3D bursting with color miracle--a true miracle--that I experienced today.

Life is full of miracles--everyday miracles. Most of them are eclipsed by activities that distract us from the wonders around us.

Our bodies totally replace themselves every 13 months. Yet even as they do, we retain our uniqueness. Our bodies have the same peculiarities, aches, and pains, and I have the same mop of curls I've had since I was a toddler, yet every one of them is new each year.

Having coffee with a new friend consumes five hours like they were an instant. There is a magical familiarity though you never met before. A play date with an old friend unwinds perfectly and totally without conscious intention. Conversations with my college roommate always pick just as though we'd talked yesterday when it may have been a year...and they've been doing that for decades. When I think about them, all of these are miracles.

As a dancer, I've had dances with people that were other worldly. In one case a Viennese waltz unfolded so effortlessly and flawlessly that I am sure we must have been dancing that dance together for lifetimes. Although my partner and I danced together for seven years, that one dance stands out in my memory a dozen years later. In another case an Argentine Tango was pure magic with a partner I only ever danced with one time. A theater arts performance left me sure that I actually could fly.

Of course, the most perfect miracles are those of love: the pride of a parent at a child's accomplishment or the care of an aging parent who has become dependent on the child, who once depended on him or her. And, of course, there is nothing quite as wonderful as the equally miraculous gaze in the eyes of new love or the mellowed, appreciative look of matured love.

Everyone of these is a miracle. Too often the miraculous moments slip through a crevice in time, not unlike my memory of spring bulbs coming up anew each year. In tensions of other moments, the miraculous ones may totally disappear from memory. I regret that I have learned too late to savor those moments before they slipped away, many lost forever.

Yet there is a miracle greater than all if these, and that is being able to start anew each day with the wisdom gained in all the days before. Tomorrow I can start again with new appreciation for every miracle with which I am blessed and truly savor each.

All of these are truly miracles.








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Climate Change

I am intensely experiencing climate change today. Not that kind of climate change--the kind where temperate Washington is hammered with a brutal 4-month icy, snowy, cold winter and my former rainy home in Oregon is experiencing drought and forest fires in what is normally the rainy season--although the kind I write about today is related.

I've spent the last two weeks indoors, mostly in darkened rooms, recovering from eye surgery. Yet even in that environment, I've experienced my own personal climate change. My retina has been liberated from film and fluid that have darkened my world for almost two years. Even in dark rooms, I have felt like I have burst from an all-twilight life boldly into sunny high noon...24x7.

I've always been someone who needs light, but I didn't fully understand the impact until this week. I not only see better, but I feel lighter and brighter emotionally too.

Climate change worked it's way into my life in another way today. Just five days ago wind-chill temperatures were zero. Even though I was out very little, I could judge the temperature by how hard my heating system worked to keep my normally toasty apartment a little chilly.

Like a miracle, today temperatures have broken into the 60s (16-17 C). Street musicians once again serenade walkers and runners on the sidewalks. Attired in shorts and skorts, tennis players flocked to the University courts near my home. Undaunted by many remaining piles of snow up to three-feet high, I spotted several 80-and 90-somethings walking with their push-carts to run errands, and one  elderly women, who had walked to a bench with her walker, stopped me to chat.

Like them, I feel lighter, too. I lost 10 pounds today! Layers of turtlenecks, sweaters, our heaviest coats, boots, hats, earmuffs, and scarves finally shed in a day after months of being one with us.

We have many kinds of climate in our lives. While the reality of global climate change cannot be denied, many of them are influenced by our minds and hormones. The reality of the change I feel in my brighter world cannot be denied. Nor can the uplift of spirit in shedding that 10 pounds of winter attire to walk in the warmth of early spring sunshine. It's enough to make me jump for joy...and that, too, can be a climate change.

Harvard researcher Amy Cuddy has researched the victory stance. You know it: arms extended upward with chin up and head back, just as an athlete crosses a finish line. She says that when we take that position, our bodies release hormones associated with winning, without doing anything else! If we want to be winners, all we have to do is take the stance, and we change to the inner climate of a winner. (If you haven't watched her TED talk, it should be must-viewing for life.*)

So today I am going to jump for joy, change my inner climate to match the outer climate...and head to my balcony to get ready for the inevitability of those first crocus sprouts, which will pop through the soil any day now. Yes!

*Link to Amy Cuddy's TED talk. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ks-_Mh1QhMc


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I have a few passions in life, and one of them is flower gardening--very precisely flower gardening.  I have no interest in growing things to eat unless they happen to be flowering herbs that I can cook with (another passion,) and to give me a house plant is a death sentence to the poor plant.  But, flowers are a whole different thing for me. 

Why, you may ask, am I talking about growing flowers when the wind-chill temperature tonight is predicted to be zero?  Well, I ordered some hard-to-find shade plants on the internet.  That apparent set loose a frenzy of address-sharing, which has resulted in a treasure trove of gardening catalogs...every day.  Today's bounty was particularly generous.  I am not sure if it is a blessing or curse, but it always seems that the catalogs are most plentiful in the worst of winter to tease or entice me into thinking about spring.  I am going to take it as a blessing.

Since I live in an apartment, I have a limited amount of space, and I am probably already over-planted.  But just looking at the catalogs made me start thinking about the promise of spring. There are spring flowers lurking below the soil, waiting for the first warm breezes and longer days to pop their heads through the soil...right on my balcony...now.

Long before I began a conscious spiritual journey, and even longer before I began meditating, getting my fingers in the soil was my meditation.  When I was married, my husband used to say he could watch me go into a zone that was like watching tai-chi as soon as I got near my plants.  I am not sure what there is about flowers, but I know I am not alone in this zen-like experience of gardening.  It has been too long since I've had my fingers in the soil...and judging from the temperatures right now, it will be longer still.

There is a magic that happens as the first tender green pops through the soil in late February or early March.  The flowers wait patiently to break through the earth.  I wonder if I am not like those plants, I've been patiently waiting to grow to the next stage.  I've been saying this season's affirmations since mid-September, and waiting...waiting for the thoughts to become reality.  In the past, there was suddenly a day when I realized I wasn't just saying, "I am love," but I actually felt it in my bones.  Just like the plants waiting to break through the soil, I think my evolution is kindled in my heart ready to emerge anew.  I am ready.  I am ready to see the new me emerge, along with the first flowers of spring.

Birthing the Intentions of Spring

After a week typing it and completing the first proofreading of The Game Called Life manuscript yesterday, I decided I needed to do something different today.  With a steady downpour outside, a long walk was not an option I chose.

My desk is stacked and sadly overflowing, so cleaning my desk seemed in order.  I've been at it for about five hours now, and I can truthfully say that I cannot tell that I've done anything.  Really!  Much of the sorting that I've been doing has been turning handwritten notes from meditations and retreats into word documents that I could file and refer to.  Other pages in the stacks have been thoughts for various books that I am working on. 

Among the pages of notes, I found intentions for the rest of the year from my spring retreat.  While I am still without a life partner again for almost 20 years, I am amazed at how much on the list is gradually becoming reality.  The summer must have been a germination period, because since my mid-September retreat and thanks to both this blog and the government shutdown and my furlough, my intentions have been in fast-forward.  Making a contribution to the healing of the world, using my voice, and writing daily have become a reality.  I hope this blog is making a difference, and I am confident that when The Game Called Life is an e-book, it will dramatically contribute to the healing of our world.

At the end of the page of intentions, I had printed in larger letters "WHAT IS MY INTENTION?"  I believe that referred to what my single underlying intention was from all the others.  I had a drawing and the words "living at the choice point."  Choice Point is a book that I wrote in the late 90s but has never been published. It is about living in conscious communion, moment-by-moment, with All That Is. For me that means, following what I know to be true in my heart. I call the process "living a prayer."  As I looked over the list, it was true: the only way I could do anything on the list is by living a prayer. 

I definitely am not there, but I am markedly farther along than I was six months ago when I wrote this.  I truly believe that I have planted seeds over the summer and in this furlough that predict I will be still farther along the path when I cross the one-year anniversary of my last spring retreat.  And, that's what it is all about--consciously attempting to do better and better at living a spiritually rich life.  In my heart I know that is where I am intended to be.