Being Flexible with the Universe

As I've written in this blog a number of times before, I love to take a few days at the Jewish New Year to reflect on the past year and to imagine the path before me in the next year. I choose to use this time to set my intentions for the year ahead. The date of the holiday fluctuates, but it is generally between mid-September and early-October.  This year it began at sundown on September 13.

I am not Jewish, but coinciding the timing for such reflection with the holiday makes sense to me, perhaps because I spent so many years, either as a teacher or student, starting a school year in the fall. I love to learn, and the anticipation on new lessons always excited me. Similarly, my reflections inevitably reveal lessons from the year past and point to potential learning in the year ahead.

Or maybe the timing makes sense to me because I am a gardener, and fall marks the conclusion of the harvest and the dropping of seeds into the ground to sprout the following spring. It is always rewarding to consider what I've grown in the past year and to wonder what I will seed in the year ahead.

For whatever reason, taking a few days of silence at this time of year has become essential to my spiritual growth and development for the last 20 years.  You can understand my consternation, then, when I discovered that this year's somewhat early holiday was going to occur during a short trip to Spain that I'd booked some time ago. I was book-ended on the trip with work commitments and a training session, making it difficult to extend my vacation in either direction. What would I do?  Fortunately or otherwise, the pace of activity leading to the trip overcame thoughts of figuring out what I would do.

As it worked out, I was in Barcelona on the 13th.  I love architecture, and there is nowhere that I've been which is more richly endowed with extraordinary edifices as those seeded by Antoni Gaudi about Barcelona.  At about noon on the 13th, as I sat soaking in the light and color, awestruck again as I'd been during an earlier visit in 2012, the date occurred to me.  For someone who loves architecture, there could not have been a more spiritual setting for reflection.  So I sat and reflected.

(For  more images, see: https://www.google.com/search?q=pictures+of+la+sagrada+familia+barcelona&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ved=0CDgQ7AlqFQoTCMz83Lif_scCFYVWPgodmpQFtA&biw=864&bih=494#imgrc=5xYv7yXQlAZ4LM%3A)

The funny thing is that when I'd shared my dilemma about not having my meditation retreat with my friend Amy a few weeks earlier, she'd suggested that I find a church wherever I was and meditate. Without conscious intention, that is exactly what had occurred. Over the next 24 hours, I kept bumping into experiences that stimulated reflection, and the day ended with me sitting and reflecting in the Cathedral of Barcelona, the only Gothic cathedral in the city.

Furthermore, during the week I was in Spain, I ran into one situation after another that encouraged me to look inward. (More on some of those in the next few days.) So, my time of reflection was quite different than had been my norm, but by being flexible with the Universe and letting it leading me where I needed to be, I accomplished the intention of my annual retreat in a very different way. (And for my listening and flexibility, the Universe threw in some very good Spanish food and wine as a bonus--have to say that really beat my usual fasting regime.)

Where has compassion gone?

As the image of a dead three-year-old refugee boy, laying face down in the sand at the edge of the surf, gripped the world over the weekend, stories of compassion began to emerge.

Bryndis Bjorgvinsdottir, a young woman still living at home with her parents, scoffed at the Iceland government's offer to take in 50 refugees.  She launched a Facebook page, saying a friend had opened his home to several families, and she would pay airfare for five people.  Over the last few days, 11,000 Icelanders have offered to support refugees to resettle in their country, over and above the meager response of their government.

Iceland isn't alone in the paltry government response to the current refugee crisis. Not only are numbers low in many developed countries, including the US and Canada, but the processing time is so glacial that people die for lack of response.  The family of the young boy above, who had relatives in Canada and had attempted to resettle in both Canada and the US, is among them.  The boy, his mother, and brother all died as their inflatable raft deflated while they literally and unsuccessfully hung on for dear life.

On Canadian Broadcasting's Day Six, host Brent Bambury interviewed a middle-aged Vietnamese woman who, as an 11-year-old child traveling alone, was one of the earlier "boat people" that time from Vietnam. She had been sponsored to come to Canada, where she started a new life.  She eventually became a professional, started her own business, and brought other family members, who also started businesses, to Canada.

For several years while I lived in North Carolina another of the Vietnamese boat people manicured my nails.  She and her husband, also a boat person that she met in a refugee "tent city" in Hong Kong, also started a successful business and a family and became active in their community. They frequently hosted fund-raiser for one charitable cause of another.

In my lifetime, I recall the Vietnamese boat crisis and before that Cuban Mariel Boatlift,  who risked their lives to make a run to Florida. Over 600,000 people, many lone children, resettled in the US. My pastor was about the same age as the girl above from Vietnam, when he too made the risky journey to the US.  In 2013, he gave the invocation at President Obama's second inauguration.

Not so many years before I was born, 250,000 refugees were resettled in the US after World War II. Throughout the 19th Century, thousands of Jewish refugees of pogroms in Eastern Europe landed in the US to make a better, safer life for themselves and their families. They, their children, and grandchildren have become a who's who of the entertainment industry and the professions.

Also in the mid-19th Century, droves of Irish fled to the US to escape the "Potato Famine."  In 1947 the city of Boston alone, then a city of 115,000, took in 37,000 immigrants, roughly one-third their population. In the same year, New York with a population of 372,000 took in 53,000 Germans. Even though it is easy to dismiss these surges with idyllic views of the 19th Century, a careful reading of history shows that the influxes were not painless.

As recently as last year, the US attempted to lock out or return thousands of refugees from gang violence in Central America.  El Salvador is now known as the most dangerous country on earth. One of the leading presidential candidates disparages those attempting to come to the US as murders and rapists, rather than showing us a path to our compassionate roots.

Having slept restlessly Saturday night with aching for the thousands fleeing some of the worst monsters ever to walk this earth and our developed world's lack of gumption to do something to help, I entered an UberX vehicle Sunday morning and chatted with my driver, a man I would guess to be in his late 20s.  He had come here from Ethiopia two and a half years ago. He was quick to tell me he was a Christian, signalling that he has probably been the brunt of the anti-Muslim prejudice that predominates this country.  Running his own business, he told me his day begins at 4 a.m. on weekends, starting with people who are going to the airport.  He generally works 14 hours on the weekend days.

As he dropped me at church, he asked that I pray for him. I felt like asking for him to pray for those of us who can't see the richness that comes to our country with industrious and talented immigrants like himself.

While one great-great grandmother was Native American, the rest of my ancestors were immigrants. In fact most of us in the US today are the descendants of immigrants.  Many of their ancestors were in a similar situation to the current refugees, fleeing physical, emotional, cultural, religious, or physical persecution in their homelands.  Yet there seems to be collective amnesia that there were people in this country that may have found the onslaught of their very own ancestors just as potentially unsettling as they do the current wave of refugees.

Every major religion has a belief that is somehow equivalent to the "Golden Rule"--do unto others as we would have them do unto us.  Would we not want compassion if we were in inflatable rafts, risking life and limb to escape barbarians in our homelands?  What has happened to our compassionate roots?

I am troubled about how I can make a difference, even as Pope Francis has called for every Catholic parish to take in a refugee family.  Bryndis Bjorgvinsdottir has demonstrated once again what Margaret Mead showed us decades ago: "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has."

My Own Personal Genius

After church yesterday, I came in and flipped on the local NPR station as I often do. I listen as I cook. Radiolab was mid-show when I tuned in, so I don't have a lot of context for what came earlier.  I was, however, absolutely fascinated by two interviews about the creative process.  The first was with a musician, who shall remain nameless because I tuned in mid-interview and can't find it on the web. The other was with best-selling author Elizabeth Gilbert of Eat, Pray, Love fame.

My fascination was with their separate descriptions of controlling the creative process--what I will describe as managing the muse.  Gilbert described the difference in how we talk about "genius," as something a person is, opposed to what the ancient Greeks did, which was something we have.  Having a genius feels rich, maybe even decadent.  Having a genius at my personal disposal offers limitless possibilities.

Both artists described talking to the muse as something one masters. The musician described being in heavy traffic when a marvelous song just came to him.  He said that he told the muse, or as Gilbert would say the genius, that it was obvious that he was in traffic and couldn't capture the song.  He ordered it to come back when he could write it down, if it was to be his song...and it did.  He literally acted as if the muse was his servant.

Gilbert told similar stories, but I was most interested in the one about the title of her popular Eat, Pray, Love book.  She said throughout the writing and even through editing and proofing she could only come up with a "working title" that she knew wasn't right.  She told of an extensive process of soliciting input from many friends, but she knew that none of them were correct.  It was only when she told her muse to give her a title that she awakened the next morning with Eat, Pray, Love, and instantly knew it was the title for which she'd been waiting.

This grabbed my attention because I have had a compelling relationship with titles of my books, both written and those still incubating. I have often had the inspiration for a book that felt like it wanted to pour out of me right now but inconveniences of daily life, like earning my paycheck, got in the way.  Unlike Gilbert, I most often get the title before I get the book.  Years ago I started a folder on my computer called "Books in the Making," and when I had one of these inspirations, I'd start a new document and write a paragraph or two to jog my memory when I have time to write.

It's not like I have had an excess of writing time in recent years, but on the occasions when I have set aside writing time, reading the files has not recaptured the energy of the inspiration that I'd had earlier.  In fact, if I can remember any of it, what remains is a lukewarm trite topic.  Where was the idea that was so great?

I am truly intrigued by the concept of ordering "my genius" to hold that energy and come back to me when I have time to at least write a chapter or two to warm the groove.  I can promise you that I will do so the next time I have an inspiration.  In the meantime, I expect that I will need to build a little "mastering my genius" muscle to figure out how to make the concept work for me, but doing so is a task that I am up to.  In fact, I am actually looking forward to it.  Do you suppose I can name "my genius?"

Lazy Summer Day

Saturday I had a wonderful lazy afternoon with a dear friend.  We lunched ever so slowly on my balcony, enjoying a little prosecco as we looked at some art photos she had developed and talked of both past and anticipated travel adventures. We luxuriated on a comfortably warm, late summer afternoon. We also spoke of challenges and deeper things.

Tonight I shared a bi-weekly call with another friend.  For the first bit I was walking as we talked, and then I found a shady park bench and just enjoyed the conversation.  We chatted of triumphs, challenges, and, aware of the coming Jewish New Year, of hopes for the year ahead.

One of the Seven Habits of Happiness in the class I just completed is "Relationships." The first habit we explored in the class, it is the one in which I feel the greatest void. I've truly pondered how I can fix that situation, but I can't resurrect family members that are no longer with us. When I've moved, although friends have said they would come and visit, each time only one has actually done that--one time. One of the prices I've paid for needing to start over again later in life by moving to a new city is that at a certain stage in life my contemporaries are solidly in long-term relationships.  I have a few friends who are there occasionally, but the truth is that they are infrequent relationships.

These were the first times since my class that I spent time with friends.  With each, I really savored our time together.  While I often rush from one event in my life to another without really enjoying any of it, in these times I was present, totally in the moment, mindful, and grateful--all habits of happiness.

As a definite introvert, I more often than not go through life happily alone, but my class and time on Saturday heightened my awareness of how relationships enrich my life, so instead of slipping into church, participating in worship, and quietly slipping out the side door as I usually do, yesterday I made a point to introduce myself to a couple I hadn't seen or talked to before. Today, I went out of my way to talk with someone in my office that I usually just greet in passing.

I believe that my happiness boils down to holding myself accountable.  Taking a class won't do it unless I act on what I have learned, and this week I've really learned how important relationships are. I am holding myself accountable for creating more of them.

Remorse and Redemption

I just saw "Ricki and the Flash," Merryl Streep's new movie about a woman who abandons her three children and husband to pursue a career as a rock musician.  Although Ricki attempts to put the family part of her life behind her, the hole in the center of her life gnaws at the edges of it, stealing her joy and capacity to love.  In the end (no spoiler here) she is able to redeem herself.

During the 30-minute walk home from the movie the themes of remorse and redemption kept toying with me.  I did a little research when I got home and kept bumping up against Khaled Hosseini's best selling novel The Kite Runner about the boy Amir who betrays his best friend Hassan.  When his guilt gnaws at him, he attempts to assuage his pain with yet another duplicitous act.

Eventually, both Ricki and Amir find redemption and atonement.  The word "atonement" has been broken to demonstrate its meaning as "at-onement."  Atonement does imply a healing--a softening of the separation created by betrayal until we are able to be whole, both within ourselves and with the victim(s) of the act.

While I like to assuage my own guilt at pain I know I have caused by saying "I was doing the best I could with where I was at the time."  But, is that enough?  Twelve-step programs demand "making amends."  In Amir's case, he is able to adopt Hassan's son after he has been orphaned.  Ricki, too, finds a way to heal relationships. Neither can remove the pain caused, but each is able to bridge the gap caused by their acts.

As I walked this evening, I felt truly remorseful.  I know that I haven't always been the easiest person to live with, and I have struggled with how to follow my heart without being selfish and hurtful of others in my life. I have the deepest regret at the pain I caused my ex-husband when I, not that much unlike Ricki except there were no children, moved across the country to pursue to dream to be an author, coach, and speaker.  I also know that the same move really hurt my adopted parents with whom I was very close before they died.

I believe that remorse is the first step toward redemption, but atonement requires "making amends," and that is often much harder, especially if someone isn't still in my life or, as with mama and papa, have even passed away.  I wish I could say I knew how to bridge the gulf that I've created, but I really don't know how.  What I do know is that when my intention is clear, God will provide me the means to do what I need to do.  All things considered, I guess that is really all I need to know.

Micro-moments of Love

One of the greatest discoveries in my Psychology of Happiness class was a YouTube video, featuring Barbara Fredrickson, a dual professor in psychology and business at the University of North Carolina. Entitled "Love--A New Lens on Thriving,"* Fredrickson describes what happens to us physiologically when we love someone. She isn't necessarily talking about romantic love or "chemistry," but more universal love.

Not only does love make us feel better, i.e., have more positive emotions, but the health benefits are significant, ranging from the production of Mother Nature's feel-good chemical oxytocin, nicknamed the hormone of love, to deeper sleep, and reduced depression.  Furthermore, it increases trust and resilience.

Among other research findings, Fredrickson reports that in as little as 10 minutes of loving kindness meditation a day over a three-month period we can change the vagal tone of the heart, something previously believed to be unchangeable.  What occurs is that our heart slows on the exhale, actually producing a positive moment of warmth and love.

I wondered, exactly what is loving kindness meditation?  I did a little research, and, while there are countless descriptions, quite simply put, it is thinking positive thoughts of love about the world around us and imagining those positive feelings flowing in and out of our hearts with the breath.  (If there are authorities on loving kindness meditation out there cringing, please jump in on the conversation, but this is a three-line description, not a dissertation.)  In 10 minutes of this practice a day, we can literally change our physiology in a positive way.

In the three weeks since I first watched the video, I've been practicing for 10 minutes a day, and I've discovered an amazing thing.  Just by starting my day with the loving kindness meditation, I am able to "plug into" that wonderful positive, relaxed feeling at just the expression of intention during the day.  Very cool stuff...when I am awake enough to realize I need to pull in the heavy duty love chemicals.

The second item of interest in the video that I will talk about has to do with creating connection.  Eye contact and smiles have an amazing ability to evoke mimicry, whereby we unconsciously begin mirroring the other person which creates even more connection.  (The technical term if bio-behavioral synchrony.) A virtuous cycle of connection leading to more connection to even more connection is perpetuated.  We build escalating love and trust. As long as we feel safe we can generate "micro-moments of love" just by making connection--eye contact, smiles, touch, or voice.

I've been pondering The Grocery Store Game, which I've written about a number of times.  (See the blog-post for December 1, 2013, "Could We Change The World in 30 Days?") The secret to the game was to make eye contact and really feel gratitude as the player says, "Thank you."  I've played it many times, as have a number of my coaching clients.  There can be a real and sincere connection made in a split second at a grocery store check stand.  While Fredrickson spoke of connections with those we know, as I read about Fredrickson's micro-moments of love, I couldn't help but wonder, is that what is happening in The Grocery Store Game?

While the intention of The Grocery Store Game is to give a simple gift of gratitude to a stranger, it would seem that as we play it, the giver of gratitude is actually starting in motion many positive physical benefits for him/herself as well.

As I think about both my ability to "drop into" the feeling of loving kindness and generating micro-moments of love through connection, my belief in the ability of humankind to generate a "river of love" that connects all of us is renewed.  That we might be healthier because we have is an added benefit.








*https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZxoPLtRnxZs

Housecleaning

I have just finished a fast-paced course on the Psychology of Happiness.  There was a lot of writing and even more reading, as well as participation in online class forums.  While I have definitely just done a major sigh of relief, I will miss some of the fruitful conversations (and consequent personal insights) that I've had with my classmates.   Not much of content was new to me but the self-discoveries along the way were invaluable.

There was a twice a year ritual that I experienced while growing up in the Midwest:  housecleaning. We cleaned more than twice a year, but the fall and spring housecleaning was different.  Literally everything in the house was turned over and cleaned.  Windows were washed. Drawers were emptied, sorted to dispose of things that had outlived their usefulness or size, and reordered.  More than just cleaning, the ritual was cleaning out.

For a few years in my adulthood, I continued the ritual, but gradually it went from twice a year to once a year.  First the windows were dropped off.  Then the cleaning out the drawers fell away. Gradually, the ritual just disappeared. Even on my way-too-frequent moves, I seemed not to find the time or priority to clean out.

As my class has been drawing to an end, I've felt myself itching to clean out.  That may at least be in part due to the fact that stacks of reading materials and outlines for essays have overtaken my small desk.  A second computer that is still not been completely replaced by the new one, and related technology items, add to the disarray as does an inappropriate gift I received a few months ago and haven't quite known what to do with.  I've wished I could just push it all into a waste bin and make it go away, but I know things of value lurk in the piles. I think that has just been symbolic of what has been going on inside of me as this class is drawing to a close.

I've been feeling the need to psychologically and spiritual clean out as well.  After 14 years of serious financial struggle since the failure of my business, I am finally to a place where I can let my shoulders drop a bit.  After five years of the most dysfunctional work environment that I've ever witnessed in 25 years of consulting with organizations, three layers of management above me have either been removed or quit in the last months.  While we are now at about half-staff, and a crushing workload faces me daily as far as I can see, I can find potential that new leadership may bring.  Hope is on the horizon.

All that leads me to have discovered in these three weeks that I've been in serious fight-or-flight mode for years.  For so long, that it has become habitual.  While the content of the class has not been anything I didn't know or even anything that I didn't practice for years, it has helped me re-member who I am. I say re-member because it feels like part of myself was put on a shelf and forgotten.  If this class hasn't helped me pull it off the shelf and reintegrate it completely, at the very least I have it in my hands--all of me in my hands.

The cleaning out that I really feel the need for right now is getting rid of all the habits and behaviors that came with the fight-or-flight so that I literally have room to breathe again.  And, the funny thing is that I also think I want to actually clean out, not just metaphorically.

The myth of Psyche demonstrates that the role of women is to sort, pick out what is useful and what has outlived it usefulness.  I think my sorting muscles have atrophied, and physically cleaning my desk, files, closet, and pantry will help me get them in shape for the spiritual sorting I am beginning. While I might like to treat my psyche like my desk and make all the clutter just go away, I know that good stuff is buried in there that I don't want to lose. So, sort I will.