wholeness Archives - Page 7 of 7

March 9, 2018August 21, 2018

What Matters Most

This was the moment when I really felt it: this.

“This is bliss.”

“This is what matters most.”

Why?

Because it was a combination of what’s important to me and how my soul glows.

These moments used to be fewer and farther in between. Accidental connections to my truest nature. I wanted more.

Nowadays, I have found the words to define my personal guidelines for living a whole life. Living wholly and soulfully. Not accidental, but intentional.

That doesn’t mean life is perfect. Far from it.

I am always practicing and I have a light to guide the way: my personal guidelines for the day-to-day and my inner guide for when things get really tricky.

Everyone has this light, though not everyone has the words.

How does one learn what matters most?

By preparing for the answers: keeping sacred space, knowing your inner guide and asking the big questions, and then, living into them.

Start with Perspective

In one of my favorite movies, About Time, the lead character can time travel.

He doesn’t need a machine like Bill & Ted. He can just close his eyes, focus on a moment, and go there.

The most powerful thing he discovers? He has do-overs.

He can go back and re-do every day, savoring the moments:

Acknowledging the clerk at the market with a smile.
Noticing the beautiful windows as he’s running to catch his train.
Greeting his crying, messy child after work.

Eventually, he stops time traveling and literally only lives in the present.

Feel free to stop reading and go stream it (it’s so good).

Then, you can come back to this post and learn about how to live this way.

Why isn’t life only about what really matters?

According to the movie, life is only about these precious moments—what really matters—it’s just about our perspective on it.

Yes, and, you might be thinking.

There’s actually a lot in our lives that doesn’t matter. More so for some people than others.

How do we know what does and doesn’t matter?

“To discern what is truly essential we need space to think, time to look and listen, permission to play, wisdom to sleep, and the discipline to apply highly selective criteria to the choices we make. Ironically in [our] culture these things—space, listening, playing, sleeping and selecting—can be seen as trivial distractions,” wrote Greg McKweon in Essentialism about the disciplined pursuit of less.

How do we find space and time and permission and wisdom?

We practice.

Keeping Sacred Space

I find the best time for me to practice creating sacred space is when I’m backpacking, when I’m on retreat and when I observe Sabbath, my “weekly retreat.”

In his book, Sabbath, Muller writes, “Sabbath is an incubator for wisdom. When we allow the rush and pressure of our days to fall away, even for a short period of time, we are able to discern the essential truth of what lies before us.”

Poet Wendell Berry, who has a longstanding practice of Sabbath, wrote:

During the Buddhist Sabbath, lay people and monks gather to recite the precepts that govern their practice. There are hundreds of these precepts for monks, concerning everything from how you meditate to how you eat your food and how you wash your bowl.

But more than the specific precepts, it is a time to reiterate what is ultimately important, sacred. Whether the Eightfold Path of Buddhism, the Five Pillars of Islam, or the Ten Commandments, most religions consider certain precepts to be guiding lights to help us find our way through darker times.

Berry often writes poetry about what’s ultimately important, sacred, on the Sabbath. There is a sense of divine inspiration in his observations of the world and its interconnectedness.

“Sabbath is a time when we retreat from the illusion of our own indispensability. We are important in that we are part of something larger,” adds Muller.

Something larger that’s often hard to comprehend without some guidance.

Knowing Your Inner Guide

“Whether we choose spirituality or religion, we need a system of experiences and beliefs that is true to our own experience. We must once again look at our own lives and discover what we already know,” says Cecile Andrews, author of The Circle of Simplicity: The Return to the Good Life.

Anthropology Professor Roger Walsh wrote:

“We know more than we know we know. The inner source has been called by many names: for example, the Hindu’s “inner guru,” the Tibetan Buddhist’s “personal diety,” the Christian Quaker’s “still small voice within,” or the psychologist’s “higher self.” Whatever the name, the implications are the same. We have within us remarkable wisdom that will guide and help us if we learn how to recognize and draw on it.”

Just that simple.

Ultimately, yes, and…

From my experience the learning how to recognize [and listen] and draw on it, is a lifelong quest for the monks and us lay people alike.

Over the years, I’ve come to know and listen to this.

My inner guide is the filter for what is true to me, at any given time, on my path.

As I’ve quieted and settled what Walsh describes as “the outer self” of surface emotions, habits and personality, and then “the inner self” of secret hopes and fears, self-image and beliefs, the listening grew easier, the voice grew louder and clearer.

This so-called voice lies within our “deep self,” or soul.

For some this conversation comes through deep, committed practices with meditation or yoga.

For me this conversation comes mainly through intentional practices of:

Going on a personal retreat almost every season from 2007-2017, as well as solo backpacking trips since 2015.
Digesting and listening each week on Sabbath since 2015. In the absence of work, of plans, of internet, of emotions and habit, and of self-image, I hang out with my soul.

It is in these sacred spaces and times when I’ve become acquainted with my inner guide, my deep self, my still small voice within.

It’s always been there, I just hadn’t asked or hadn’t really listened before.

Asking the Big Questions

Listening starts with asking. The curiosity to receive whatever shows up.

Questions like:

What inspires me?
What is it like when I’m “in my element”?
What is love?
What do I believe?
What do I fear?
What’s always been important to me?
What connects me to Source?
When do I feel whole?

I’ve been amazed at how often it’s in the most minuscule moment of awe, perhaps examining a worm slithering through the soil, that my inner guide reveals my deepest knowing, the answers to these questions.

“Sabbath honors this quality of not knowing, an open receptivity of mind essential for allowing things to speak to us from where they are,” wrote Muller.

It is a lifelong conversation to recognize our own wisdom.

There is a difference between knowledge and wisdom.

In Essential Spirituality, Dr. Walsh said:

Knowledge informs us, wisdom transforms us.
Knowledge is something we have, wisdom is something we must become.
Knowledge is expressed in words, wisdom in our lives.
Knowledge empowers, wisdom empowers and enlightens.

Wisdom is our deepest knowing.

As such, often our most heartfelt questions are more of a feeling than a thought.

They don’t always formulate into neat, little sentences.

Because it’s not about figuring things out. That’s knowledge.

This is about feeling things out as our being connects the dots and then the answer emerges.

Wisdom.

The wisdom, courage, and clarity we need are already embedded in creation—in nature, in the world, in our lives. The solution is already alive in the problem. Thus, our work is not always to push and strive and struggle. Often we have only to be still, and we will know, wrote Muller.

The Tao Te Ching asks us:

Do you have the patience to wait
till your mud settles and the water is clear?
Can you remain unmoving
till the right action arises by itself?

In other words, until the right answer arises by itself?

Moments Matter Most

Once you start having the conversation, you can discern what is truly essential, what matters most, as McKweon describes.

You’ll know what is important to you and how your soul glows.

You’ll know what this feels like and you’ll be able to start putting the words together to define your personal guidelines for living a whole life.

Once you name it, you can live it even more intentionally. Remembering and practicing these fundamental precepts each week, they become your every day.

“When I am fully aware of clouds moving, birds trilling, insects buzzing and downy feathers floating on the still lake, I lean into the portal from this moment, beyond next week, and into the grand scale of things, weighing the collection of meaningful moments holding my life together,” wrote Shelly Miller.

This is living life to the fullest.

Join others from around the country in the next Sabbath Course as we explore and practice together, inspired by an interfaith, personal approach to this universal tradition. This 7-week course includes fun weekly activities, weekly community gatherings online and your own practice. You’ll experience what students describe as a “positive and significant impact on my personal growth and spiritual exploration.”

March 6, 2018

We Are Whole Women

So many women friends have meekly confessed to me about feeling oppressed by anxiety and shortcomings. They do not feel whole.

Mind you, all of these women are strong. And accomplished.

And yet every day is a battle with themselves.

Hidden Struggles

Growing up, I idolized my Mom. As many of her friends did as well, apparently.

She was capable of doing anything and everything – all at once.

And, yet I didn’t understand her.

There were so many contradictions. And I wanted the world to be black and white.

This or that.

If I had known more about the gray reality of her life, perhaps I would have been able to accept her as she was, not only how I wanted her to be.

Apparently, she struggled with migraines nearly everyday while we were kids. As well as anxiety, worry and fear.

I didn’t see this pain. I saw the smiley faces on my hand-packed lunches and her frowny face when I didn’t do what I was told (which was most of the time).

I saw her seemingly opposing truths as flaws, instead of realities of being human.

Perhaps in her perfection-seeking aims, she saw them as flaws too.

Now, as a grown woman I see these contradictions in myself and in the women in my life:

of fragility and tenacity,
of shyness and initiative,
of joy and fear,
of generosity and scarcity,
of love and ambivalence,
of self-doubt and confidence,
of unworthiness and sacrifice,
of judgment and grace,
of wonder and control,
of candor and secrecy,
of protective and overbearing,
of real and larger-than-life.

I see now this is what it means to be a whole, living being.

And I see that my own experiences with anxiety, worry and fear stemmed from doubting my own wholeness.

Self-Creating Women

Here is what I know about the women in my life.

These women have created their own lives with a self-efficacy, or the ability to control and manage one’s behavior, only recently available in history.

For some that’s a business, for most it’s a career (or careers).

Many have paid off their own student loans and many have fronted the down payment for their own home.

For some it has been carrying, birthing and/or raising children.

For some it has been sustaining a healthy partnership.

Many have traveled alone, or lived alone, or moved alone, or grieved alone, or suffered alone. And woven these times of solitude into their being.

Coming back into community, family, relation with the world, again. And again.

And again.

Deep Doubt

And yet, they regularly doubt their choices and their instincts, spinning options in their minds and often coming to the conclusion: they haven’t gotten it right yet.

The life they have painstakingly created is still not right.

They are distracted and fragmented by anxiety and worry that they are not complete exactly as they are.

I look around at the women in my life and I see a list of accomplishments that could go to the moon and back.

To look at most of them you’d think: Dang, she’s made it.

And yet in conversations I hear the same thing again and again: self-doubt about one’s ability to cope with life.

And so, these women walk through their lives feeling the wind blow through their holes and wondering why doesn’t it blow them over?

Because, ladies, there are no holes. We are whole. We are done. We are here.

Whole Women

Here is how I know the women in my life are whole: they get up every morning.

They get dressed.

They consider the day and know it holds too much. And they still attempt it anyways.

They start over a bazillion times a day.

Their default is how to make things better.

They wish they talked to their girlfriends more.

They wish they thought about everything less.

They praise about ten times as much in their hearts as comes out of their mouths.

They question if they can ever be as ______________ as someone they admire, yet simply by being aware they have their answer already .

They don’t think they really know grace, compassion, lovingkindness, just like they forget they are breathing.

They start over a bazillion times a day.

They make the best choices they can with the information they have.

There is always more to do and rarely a sense of enough.

They dream for generations, not only for themselves.

They see the best in others, unless their intuition tells them there’s danger.

They take care of others’ needs about ten times as much as they remember to take care of their own.

And then they go to bed. And do it all again the next day.

That is what the women I know do.

Being Whole, Being Alive

That is also what the men I know do. That is what humans do. That is what living beings do.

But especially women.

Today.

In the 21st century.

In their deep doubt. Yet resounding faith in life.

Do.

That is what I know about the women in my life.

Accepting Wholeness

So what can we do to live more wholly and soulfully?

So much.

Meditate. Reflect. Breathe. Exercise. Express. Laugh. Cry. Affirm. Rest.

And not just occasionally. These are part of a daily and lifelong practice. To practice living.

But the first, the most essential thing, is going deep within, looking our deepest fear in its pale face and saying: “I believe in me.”

And then looking our sweetest self in its eager face and saying together: “I believe in me.”

This is not easy, and often takes a long time. But, once seen, it is known.

Showing up everyday knowing and believing, in the same unquestioning way we know we’re alive, that we are inherently whole and complete.

There is nothing to prove, to earn – it just is.

That is why we can be contradictions—fragile and tenacious, shy and take initiative, joyful and scared, controlling and trusting—and still be whole.

Just as all living beings are.

This truth provides the infinite strength and compassion to see others and see all of them. To be whole together.

February 19, 2018September 21, 2020

The Unseen Wheel

While the days march by in a line across our calendar, they are actually cycling through the seasons.

The unseen wheel is always turning while we grind away on the day to day.

This is so easy to forget.

And such a relief to remember.

Reality Bites

I got home last night after visiting a friend for a long weekend.

I had already done my usual Sunday chores and then some, including stopping at my post office box, before I left so the reentry was quite smooth with few steps.

I stopped at the grocery store on the way home, then unpacked, heated up some dinner and opened up the pile of mail.

At the bottom of the stack was a reality check.

I wish that meant it was a check with earnings for recent time spent living in the present, going with the flow, seeing things as they truly are, instead of how I want them to be.

Nope. It was the opposite.

It was one of my business credit card statements.

The long list of purchases had been necessary investments over the last year of getting my new business off the ground. Or seemed necessary in order to manifest the business.

Perhaps that was just the way I wanted things to be because I believe so much in it?

This was not actually the reality check.

It was the total amount of the credit card statement.

Reality Check

Given the pangs in my gut each time I used the card recently, I knew it was getting up there.

Expenses out without much income in is discouraging. And when you’re starting something new discouragement doesn’t help. At all.

And so, I had been focused on making progress, moving forward, being into each day one at a time without getting bogged down in the details.

What I hadn’t been paying attention to was how up there.

And it had crossed my imaginary tipping point of what seemed safe and doable. Now, it was at the level that seemed risky and scary.

That made my whole gut clench like a fist and yet also hollow out. Like a black hole imploding into itself.

I could instantly feel the hole, perhaps a hole that had been slowly growing over the last year, but that denial had been filling?

I did not feel whole.

Like gusts of cold breeze through an open window, many emotions passed through me as I sank down into my 45-year-old armchair.

Hurt by this consequence of past decisions that seemed right at the time,
Mourning for past successes not just breaking even, but saving ahead,
Anger at well-intentioned but broken systems,
Overwhelmed by the task of repairing the imbalance,
Scared by the possibility of not closing the hole.

And yet, I knew there was nothing I could do in that moment.

I could eat my dinner and watch a DVD from the library. And make some tea.

When the electric kettle whistled, I went over to the window sill where it’s plugged in. Something outside caught my eye. Something white.

With freezing temperatures across the state, I had driven home that day in rain, sleet and snow. But, arriving home the streets were bare.

Several hours later, in the dark as I was watching a movie and sitting with my feelings and this reality check, snow had quietly begun falling outside.

I looked closer, surprised.

Yes, the yard was in fact dusted with the powdered sugar snow.

Just as the credit card statement had snapped me into the moment, the snow snapped me into the bigger picture.

Reality Check

Of the seasons, the unseen wheel constantly turning. Always in motion.

Of which, gives us our days, weeks, months.

Of a system constantly harmonizing to realign with what’s showing up.

Of which, I am a small part.

And in which I am whole.

And when I consider the whole — of my life, of the natural world, of a mysterious force — I can once again find trust.

That things will work out, somehow.

And perspective. That things work themselves out over time and space, sometimes lots.

And peace.

And so, I find my way back to the natural rhythm as I continue to focus on making progress, moving forward, being into each day one at a time.

Without getting bogged down as I grind away on the day-to-day.

February 13, 2018

There is No Catching Up

There is no catching up. Only focusing forward.

I find this hard to believe. Why would the phrase even exist, if it’s not a thing?

Well, perhaps it was a thing once upon a time.

This lesson keeps coming knocking at my little cottage of a life’s door.

Over the last couple weeks, it’s been showing up again and again and I definitely haven’t been “opening the door”:

Unsent birthday cards
A week’s worth of dirty dishes piled up
Two weeks worth of unread emails

And then, it really I started banging at the door when I got behind on writing:

Weekly newsletter—that I didn’t write or send—and is supposed to go out on Mondays

Alright, alright. That’s enough. I’m opening the door wide open so this lesson can come right on in.

Teachable Moment: Do I try to catch up by sending out the newsletter later in the week? Or just skip it?

The Myth of Catching Up

The idea of catching up immediately connotes winning and losing for me, just like in a race.

Those who are behind are losing. Those who are ahead, who cross the finish line first are winning.

This win-lose mindset is a form of competition and comparison. And, many will tell you that comparison is the cousin of perfectionism. I agree.

Comparing this to that elevates one, creating it as an ideal. And idealizing is also a form of perfectionism: Seeing things the way we want them to be (often flawless) and not the way they actually are.

For instance, our ideal that life is only good when everything is done, everything is caught up.

Is it possible to catch up?

Sure in the racing analogy, it is, but it likely requires a big push of energy. Energy that might not really be available, hence the slower pace.

Likewise, to take the analogy off the race track and over to real life, not only does catching up expend a lot of energy, but it often neglects other current tasks or prep for upcoming tasks, thus creating even more of a pile up.

This creates a continuous and vicious cycle of catching up.

And, generates a survival mode that is often equated with treading water.

But one can only tread water for so long before drowning, right?

Not the desired outcome.

So, let’s consider this for a second:

Effort requires energy, so energy will be used regardless. But, catching up from behind often takes even more energy. So then, why aren’t we putting our energy into focusing forward, instead of catching up?

How to Get Caught Up

Let’s go back to the example at hand: Monday came and went and because of a series of choices and distractions, I didn’t write or send my weekly newsletter.

And, for context, I will be traveling Thursday and Friday, so it is a short week of work.

What are the possible next steps?

Hustle to write it and send it out today.
Let the guilt hang over me all week and attempt to get it out another day.
Let go of it. Accept the lose and move forward for next week.

This last option is the only way to actually get caught up: Focusing forward.

Makes sense, right?

Like in dancing — miss a beat, catch the next one. Don’t start the whole song over every time.

Then, why is it so hard to do?

In this newsletter instance, because I made a promise, a commitment to dependability with a Monday delivery. Breaking that promise means I’m going back on my word.

Note: I can’t quickly locate any of the communications research I studied in graduate school, but there is plenty that correlates trust in communication with consistent time and day of distribution, thus dependability. So, it’s not simply my work ethic.

Wanting to relieve that discomfort, my guilt leads me to bargaining. Trying to find a compromise, for instance, sending later in the week with an apologetic disclaimer.

But any compromise is just that. I’m not just bargaining with my past then, but also with my future.

Catching up inevitably leads to a trade-off of some future accomplishment.

After all, there are only so many hours in the day.

Staying Caught Up

By focusing forward, we can actually stay “caught up.”

Let’s use an example I hear all the time: “Let’s grab coffee and catch up.”

Imagine you haven’t someone in six months and a lot has happened since then so, of course, you want to be filled in.

But, by the time both of you get caught up with sharing stories from the last six months, your coffee’s are cold, the available time has elapsed and you haven’t necessarily shared what’s going on right now.

That’s okay. You can hear about what’s happening right now in another six months when you get the re-runs at your next coffee!

Or…you could each share what’s happening, interesting and important in your lives right now.

What’s happened has happened. That doesn’t make it unimportant. Simply not current.

If it was important, like a death in the family, then it’s likely still part of the present and so will probably come up in reference to a story related to today.

Thus, when coffee is done you’ll be moving forward in your lives together.

This is something I’ve been practicing for awhile, including reframing the encounter to cut out the catching up: “Let’s get coffee and connect” (about right now).

Lives of Catching Up

By focusing on staying current—doing what gets done, learning about right now, rescheduling what’s critical and discarding the rest—life starts to actually feel doable.

Instead of that oppressive feeling of not getting anywhere.

In the last couple weeks I’ve noticed how pervasive this idea of catching up is throughout my whole life. I’m always catching up. Not just with work projects and tasks or with friends, but with everything.

There is no room for falling behind, none the less for the present, because the future is already spoken for.

Just in January alone, three books were recommended to me that related to what I’m currently curious about or studying. I wanted to read them so I checked them out of the library.

Each night, I pass my bookshelf to get into bed and the other day, I glanced over at the top shelf as I carried one of the new library books up to bed with me.

As I paused, I realized:

All the books on that shelf were ones I wanted to read when I moved them from my last apartment nine months ago,
I had read exactly one book from that shelf in the last nine months,
I carried guilt about not following through on my good intentions, and perhaps most poignantly,
There was no room for new books!

Even though I had downsized and gotten rid of half my belongings in the move, apparently I had still moved many, many good intentions. Tiny plans for the future.

Not a bad future, but one based on an imagined reality, not an informed one. Not what’s showing up right now.

Beyond the bookshelf, I noticed tiny, good intentions everywhere—surplus bubble wrap, tissue paper, boxes, lotion, soap.

It’s true, most of those practical items will be needed someday in my life. But right now, they add to the pile up of things that my life needs to catch up to!

Catching Up On Life

Like reframing coffee date encounters, releasing good intentions is a relatively minor mindset shift and easily implementable once noticed.

But, what about lost time?

A couple weeks ago, I was talking to my Dad about my life right now—we stay pretty current and active in each others’ lives—and about starting over this year with a new business at 35 years old.

He asked an informed and relatively innocent question:

“But how are you going to get financially secure by 40? It’s very hard to catch up after that.”

What he meant was, given how little I’d been able to earn and save to date in my entrepreneurial pursuits, how would this new business earn me the income over the next five years to buy a home and create a nest egg for retirement that will mature over 20-30 years so that I can actually retire.

It’s a valid question. Especially for a caring parent to ask. Albeit one who settled down financially in a different, booming economic era.

My answer: It’ll will be tough. And possibly unlikely.

Definitely unlikely if I’m focused on catching up, instead of on focusing forward.

Begin Again, In Love

What does focusing forward look like?

Lots of grace. Accepting what is, both what didn’t happen as expected or planned, and any resulting guilt. As quickly as possible.

The vast majority of what doesn’t happen wasn’t a must, but a should as Elle Luna so elegantly expounds in her Medium post.

Putting faith in the musts—what must get done always does—there is once again plenty of time.

From this blank slate, we can “begin again in love” as the Reverend at the church I attend likes to quote.

And from love is born all of the grace and most (if not all) of the musts that our life actually needs.

But, will love help me find financial security by 40, I can imagine my Dad wondering?

Love for all my fellow soul searchers also figuring out how to be whole in the here and now? My guess is yes.

The immediate lesson for this week’s teachable moment is clear: skip the newsletter and move on, wholeheartedly, to write this post for another week’s newsletter.

February 1, 2018

Gone Sabbathing

Just as a fisherman makes new bait and packs up his tackle box so that he has what he needs to peacefully sit in his boat and do nothing while he’s “gone fishing,” I’ve noticed that preparing for Sabbath makes the time so much sweeter.

Over the years of observing the gift of Sabbath there have been days when everything was ready and days when everything was in disarray.

And even a day or two when I skipped Sabbath because I wasn’t “done” with the week yet.

The following week was even harder to get through, not easier.

Happy (& Unhappy) Sabbath

When my cottage has piles of good intentions and undone to-dos scattered around when the weekend arises, I’ve ended up in a vegetative state of “rest” on Sabbath.

I’d watch movies or read for hours on end.

Technically, I’m not doing anything, so still “sabbathing,” right?

Yet, the following day I’ll feel empty and drained instead of full and invigorated.

Other times, I’ve escaped the mess, spending the day out exploring in the world. I return feeling full, but still a bit spent.

I understand the intention behind many traditions having specific guidelines (or often very specific rules) about how to enter Sabbath.

It’s true, the day is more accessible and sweeter when my life is ready to take a break.

And, interestingly, my mindset matters more than the mess.

When my body is ready to take a break as well, when I’ve emptied my mind and heart of grievances and concerns, then it doesn’t bother me as much.

Acts of Service, Acts of Love

As Shelly Miller writes in Rhythms of Rest, “when we run errands early in the week, clean up the house, prepare food for the weekend, these are acts of love at the root.”

She says that preparation is an act of love and rest is an act of faith.

I usually think of errands, cleaning, cooking etc. as acts of obligation.

But, when they are in preparation for something special, like a holiday or a holy day, they do take on a different motivation.

I sense the devotion to myself and my loved ones as I double down on the housework or email.

In his book, The Five Love Languages, Gary Chapman describes this as Acts of Service: “doing things you know ____________ (name of someone you love) would like you to do.”

In other words, Chapman says, you seek to please them by serving them, to express your love by doing things for them.

And, I think this starts with ourselves.

But, I think the idea of self love is misleading. Self love doesn’t exist.

There is always love there.

A love that is whole and keeps me whole. Because, the whole cannot be whole without all of me.

But, when my devotion is lacking, when there are holes of fatigue or hurt or disappointment or fear, it is harder to do these acts of service, acts of love.

This is where the faith comes in.

Preflight Checklist

Knowing, from wisdom and intuition, what will make things better for later.

Knowing that the satisfaction, joy, elation later will be far greater than the effort now.

And, it can be even more effortless when done already feeling joyful anticipation.

What will make Sabbath easier?

This list can get very long, but I’ve noticed that there are usually a few key things that really matter.

If undone, they’ll hang over me or get in my way. Or create a gap that jerks me out of my flow.

Like not having anything in the house to eat.

Everybody’s checklist of priorities is different.

For me, it is:

An empty sink,
A tidy home,
Groceries and optimally pre-made meals,
Critical emails sent

And, if I’m really in a groove, what will make the day after easier?

Errands run
Quick look ahead to following week
And in my current routine, my next blog post done and newsletter prepped

Acts of service go beyond showing devotion to ourselves and to others, and include receiving service.

Which begs the question: Who can help with these preparation priorities?

Asking for and receiving help may actually be the greatest form of satisfaction, joy, elation.

And this is all before Sabbath!

Weekly Wind Down

“As I prepare on Saturday by cooking meals and completing chores, the process becomes a door slowly closing on distractions in order to be fully present with my people. The day is aromatic with anticipation as the kids hover around me in the kitchen, salivating over the smells simmering on the stove top and bread baking in the oven. Joy is an undercurrent of Sabbath when we make the day celebratory. And rested people make for a peaceful home,” writes Shelly Miller.

Whether Sabbath falls on Saturday or Sunday or some other time of the week, whether it’s seen as the end of the week or the beginning of the week, it is a transition.

A way to digest what was and pause before entering what will be.

In order to more fully pause, it is an opportunity to digest, process and release.

Worries, misbeliefs, concerns, joys, questions, discoveries.

And that opportunity starts in the preparation.

In Jewish traditions, varying greatly per movement and especially between Orthodox and Reform from what I’ve learned, there are specific rituals or steps to Sabbath preparation.

For example: shopping for ingredients then cooking, baking or picking up the challah, bathing, cleaning and beautifying the home with flowers, for example.

There is a bit of hustle to it, but these steps go beyond effort, they slowly get one out of the mind, into the body and back into the soul.

January 16, 2018September 6, 2018

Releasing My Mom, Finding Myself

Authors Note: Originally written/posted in Sept. 2008

Eighteen hundred miles into the roadtrip, I was lost for the first time.

The drive to Grand Junction, Colorado, was my first night ride and exiting the highway I found myself in the middle of strip mall no man’s land. Of course, I was nervous – the last week and a half had been leading up to tonight.

I would come to find out that the last six months had likely been leading up to tonight.

Or even the last five and half years.

Or just maybe, my whole life.

The scent of destiny has been trailing me like sweet perfume this whole trip. Even the frustration of getting lost seemed somehow symbolic in order to disorient any expectations of control of what was to come.

I had set out to Colorado to find closure with my Mother.

While my adolescence with my Mom was tumultuous at best, something finally started to click between us when I took leave from college at 19 and moved home.

Coming Home

Everybody had always said we were carbon copies of each other, not just because we were both “chatty Cathy’s,” but our similar looks with fine, toffee-colored hair, hazel eyes, button noses and barely-able-to-ride-the-ferris-wheel height.

Over the course of my semester off I came to see that we actually processed the world in very different ways, which actually created most of the conflict and challenges between us.

Right before the Christmas during my junior year of college, our family friends gathered together to celebrate the holidays.

We sat in the living room, the 12 kids and four sets of parents snuggled onto couches, chairs and the carpet, and shared what we were grateful for and what we were looking forward to in the coming year.

Through tears and sniffles, I sputtered out that I was grateful for my time off the previous spring and summer, allowing me to get to know my parents as adults, and very much looked forward to having a better relationship with my Mom.

Afterwards, I hugged her tiny, 5 foot frame and whispered, “I love you,” in her ear. This would be the last time I would ever hug her.

Sudden Loss

Three weeks later, she lay in the Intensive Care Unit, barely filling up half the twin hospital bed.

I had dropped her off for a routine outpatient surgery to remove a tiny (annoying, but benign) growth on her reproductive system that morning, expecting to have dinner with her and my family later that evening.

She was in a coma for three days, caused by an unexplained post-surgical respiratory arrest, until our family decided to let her go.

After being without air for several minutes while she lay in the recovery room, her brain was all but dysfunctional and recovery was impossible.

I have openly published my experiences with my mom’s unexpected death in the past as I firmly believe that death and grief are not accepted enough in our society and need to be talked about.

So many of us live with grief, just as we live with other conditions, for instance, allergies for me. It is not a weakness, simply a fact of life. Mostly dormant, but sometimes flares up.

For some reason death and grief are cast to the shadows with the negative stigma of a lurking grim reaper nowadays.

Whereas most societies around the world have joyful and/or sorrowful rituals and ceremonies that recognize, grieve and let go of their loved ones, America as a culture does not.

And so, it becomes fairly easy to cry a lot and think you’ve grieved, but really have just pushed the feelings way deep inside.

Which is what I did from 20- to 25-years-old, until the development of eczema led me in search of a more holistic solution.

Deeper Healing

And so, a series of events led me on a roadtrip to sit with a Marakame (or “shaman”) in Grand Junction, Colorado, who practices healing arts and ceremonies of the native Mexican tribe, the Huichol, amongst other callings.

I left home by myself on my 26th birthday, set to return to Oregon nearly three weeks later.

This Marakame, Deanna, who’d been practicing for a dozen years, was not going to make my skin issues go away, but address the possible source of the stress – grief.

The death ritual she’d perform was meant to help both me and my Mom come to resolution with her traumatic death.

I was surprised by how “normal” Deanna was, tall and lean with curly salt and pepper hair and glasses, wearing a fleece pull-over, jeans and clogs.

We went out into the backyard of her ranch-style home and she made a fire underneath a tree already starting to shed its leaves for the fall.

We sat in camping chairs with a wheelbarrow loaded up with seasoned, dry wood between us.

This was nothing like the scene from one of my favorite movies and books, The Power of One, where a barely clothed shaman dances around a chicken to cure the little boy from his “night terrors,” i.e.: wetting the bed.

But then, that was in the South African bush, and we were in suburban Colorado, so it made sense we were dressed.

Many Crossroads

In appreciation for the sitting, I gave her some fine chocolate, Alder wood from Oregon, and the cigar from Jackson Hole, Wyoming, along with payment for her healing services.

For the most part we just sat and talked around her fire pit in the backyard until it was time for her to do her work around 10 p.m.

We discussed my road trip thus far and my journey since college, including the cross roads I felt I was at in my budding career: to go the corporate route or go an unconventional path.

As we talked about the death, eventually tears trickled down my face like a stream through the woods.

I shared the story of our long days in the hospital and the symptoms of my grief, including my inability to access many memories including my Mother previous to the trauma of her death.

I was in a foreign place with basically a stranger and yet I felt safe. That the grief would not engulf me if I let it out of its cage.

I fear I’ll only dilute the meaning of the experience by trying to describe it, because most of the ceremony was happening within her.

Mainly, like so many other nights on the trip so far, I just sat by the fire adding logs as the heat died down, looking at the trillion stars across the night sky and thinking about random things.

Finally Letting Go

Finally, we talked about the artifacts and mementos of my Mom that I had brought along as requested.

Then, one-by-one I hesitantly added them to the flames.

There was a lock of hair, a shirt she always wore around the house, some photographs, a CD of favorite music.

The cloth, paper, plastic all flashed bright colors in the flames in their last brilliant moments and then turned to grey ashes indistinguishable from each other.

I had brought these along from Oregon as requested in a little bag, expecting that they would help the Marakame “get a feel for” my Mom.

I had no idea they would disappear.

There was one keepsake, a small heart-shaped container I felt strongly about keeping, since it had been a gift from my Mom.

The Greatest Gifts

Deanna shared with me that in many other cultures, from the Egyptians to Mexicans, part of the death ceremony includes a person’s belongings either being buried or burned with them.

In the truest form of this tradition, everything a person owned, even the dirt and dust of his or her home was swept up and added to the fire in order for the person to pass on completely.

There was not a room in my home that did not have something that used to be hers and strongly reminded me of her.

These are the ways that we hold on – physically, emotionally, energetically.

Interestingly, it struck me the sentimental difference between things that were my Mother’s versus things that she had given to me as gifts.

The possessions reminded me of loss, while the gifts reminded me of love.

I wondered, What would the world be like if the only presence we left behind was our presents?

Clearly, in life we would be more preoccupied with giving than accumulating.

While it was hard to let go of her/my treasures, I was truly amazed by the power of the fire to turn everything – a lock of her hair, polyester clothing, CDs, ceramics etc. – into ashes.

Ashes to ashes, so they say.

Answers & Blessings

Six months before the roadtrip, I attended a different fire back home in Oregon, which coincidentally this healer had attended too (though I had not met).

It was a large gathering of some 100 people from around the country and world to hear a respected speaker in the Huichol tradition.

At the end of the evening around one a.m., each person was able to offer a cigar to this man and ask a heartfelt question.

After mulling over questions all weekend, I had decided to ask, “How do I let go of my mom?”

After giving him my cigar, he opened one eye, looked at me and said, “You don’t need a question. You need a blessing.”

He took a puff of his lit cigar, pulled the ashes off the end and dotted them on my forehead like Ash Wednesday.

Curious what the blessing meant, I asked around for interpretations and then eventually went on about my life.

One suggestion was that it was for protection and safe travels.

In Colorado, the fire was similarly over around one a.m. and then I was shown to the guest room for the night.

In the morning, the Marakame and I met and talked to debrief the night before.

We talked about how the ceremony had been a modification of the traditional one due to the long time lapse since death and lack of actual remains, but that it had also been more than just a death ritual.

More than a Death Ritual

We have lost almost all connection to ritual in our culture outside of organized religion.

While we may have strong traditions or habits, we don’t necessarily know or understand their meaning.

In many cultures, birthdays are not significant for the date, but the growth.

Given the timing, having just turned 26 it made perfect sense for the Marakame to say that this ceremony was also about my own initiation into womanhood (celebrated by the Huichol between ages 15 and 26).

Six months after asking the question and just one week after my birthday, I found the answer of how to let go of my mom.

It was time to set out on my own and not live within the safety or the shadow of expectations cast by others.

At a certain age, we must all be initiated into ourselves.

We must have the courage to let go of our parents and independently become our own person. Become whole – in and of ourselves.

Within just twelve hours of arrival, I left Grand Junction with peace of mind and a strong sense of direction.

NOTE: I enjoy the company of new and old friends at monthly fires in Portland as part of the Sacred Fire Community, which I have been attending as part of the Portland hamlet since 2006. The fires, which happen around the world, are a time for people to come together for heartfelt conversation as we so often forget to do these days. You can learn more about local fires at http://www.sacredfirecommunity.org/ and plant spirit medicine healing at http://bluedeer.org/.