There's Plenty - Greeting the New Year With Open Arms

I resolved to be less afraid, more confident of our survival, the generosity of the universe in 2010. Not in a woo-woo, let's sit down and chant an affirmation kind of way (though that's probably not a bad idea)but in a practical, confident, relaxed attitude that lets me recognize that things really DO work out.

This little sweetie spent almost twenty four hours curled up in the garden in front of our house this summer - I could have opened a window and reached out to pet her. And I spent the day worried. Where was her mom? Why did she leave her for so long? Did she get hit by a car? How could we help the poor little orphan? I peeked out that window at her every hour or more. She never looked worried - sometimes she got up and stretched, obviously bored with snoozing all day in the midst of the bee balm.

I went to bed a midnight with a heavy heart. Our baby was still there, still unclaimed. I read all the warnings that you must NEVER interfere, that a mother will reject her baby when she returns if it smells like humans. But what if she didn't return?

In the morning, baby was gone. No sign of trouble (believe me, I've heard trouble - that's another story and there's no missing it), no sign of injury. Mom just returned home good and late, baby hopped up and they moved on. All my worrying was for nothing.

That's my lesson for this year; things work out. Worrying changes nothing. I am not so smart that I can figure out how things will work, but they'll work just the same.

Will things change? Absolutely. That's the nature of this life. But it'll be okay. My job is to do what I do, stretch myself a little farther, try new things and enjoy the process. That's all any of us are supposed to do.

I'm going to practice acting "as if" and see if things don't fall into place a little easier than when I try to bull them into position.

First order of business - stop fretting about this book. Just write it. Stop worrying if I'm interesting enough, compelling enough, if the stories are strong enough, if I'm exposing my innards too much, if anyone will want to read it, if it'll get published, if it'll sell. All I can do right now is write it.

Second order of business - relax about money. I'm incredibly lucky to have a job and a steady income. It seems very ungrateful to not be willing to simply find a way to live within those limitations for now. There's no saying that standard of living can't improve dramatically, and if I relax and do my part it probably will. For now, I will appreciate that fact that there are ways for me to be comfortable within the present limits, giving me room to explore those possibilities for growth.

Final order of business - let go of the past. The past decade was so traumatic, so full of wrenching change and loss that I've spent most of that time trying to figure it all out, to admit my angers and resentments and feelings of guilt and remorse. Time to move into the letting go phase. I can look around and really see now, see the terrific guy I love, my two very different and amazing children who are now young adults, see the people from my past and the people I know now and appreciate them. I'm sick of being in my own way.

That includes all the problems in this world. They'll hit me, I know. I'll react. But I'm going to try to remember that things will, eventually, work out. I'll look for the positive things to help move that along.

The 2010 decade, for me, is about finally allowing myself to be happy, just as I am, just as things are. It all really IS okay.

Another Year on the Ball

It's my birthday. It's my daughter's birthday, too, which I think is very cool. Not sure if she agrees or just placates me to be a good sport.

It's been another roller coaster year - trips to the ER, recoveries, symptoms of work burnout, awards. I've been here more than half a century now. I still don't have it figured out. But I have noticed one thing - changes, problems, miracles; they all come in groups.

If life is suddenly unbearable, you can be sure that whatever's bothering you is about to be complicated by even more stuff that makes you wonder why you were complaining before.

If you're in flux, just wait. That flux will morph into chaos in a blink and what was a small knot in your life will become a major tangle.

But the universe is even-handed. If something wonderful happens, be prepared for a wave of unbelievable and mind-blowing companion events.

What's that all about, anyway? Is it an example of quantum physics...energy accumulating and drawing even more similar energy? If you're religious, is it your deity either answering your prayers in abundance or testing your faith? Is it coincidence? That last seems least likely to me. I'm buying the first.

That quantum stuff is tricky - whatever you put energy into, whatever you concentrate on, is what you get. No value, no judgement. You put it out there, the universe makes sure you get it. So when life has you down and you're lying on the floor, just waiting for the anvil to drop from the sky, the universe will oblige. And knowing that doesn't make it any easier to stop expecting that anvil.

When blessings rain down and you're dizzy with gratitude, you're wide open to receive even more. Anything is possible.

But that quantum stuff puts it all directly in our control. We create our reality. I have to admit that I'm sometimes not pleased with what I create.

So I guess I have to figure out how to let go of the value judgements, be a little more Buddhist about it - it just is. It's not good, it's not bad, it'll change...it just IS right now.

I'm dealing with a little of the good and a little of the bad at the moment, probably a good balanced place from which to consider.

Happy birthday to me - another year to work on it.

Accepting What Is - Being Peace

I just finished a book I highly recommend: At Hell's Gate: A Soldier's Journey From War to Peace. The author is American Buddhist monk and Vietnam vet Claude AnShin Thomas.

I met AnShin more than a year ago. He was speaking at a conference in NYC and I went down to interview him. He is a mendicant monk, meaning he travels, lives on offering's he's given, and accepts no payment for work he does.

He has walked across the United States. He has walked across the scenes of war and war crimes all over Europe and done services at cemeteries, at former prison camps, at former death camps.

We hit it off, this thoughtful man and I. Perhaps it was because I knew enough from a weekend Buddhist retreat to make him comfortable that I understood the basics of what he is doing and why. Or perhaps it was just a case of finding each other sympatico. After a long chat about his workshops with veterans and their families, I found myself telling him about my idea for the Everyday People Project. His enthusiasm for it was surprising and sincere.

AnShin has the look of a Buddhist monk, but there is a sense of coiled energy under careful control that doesn't fit the "still waters" stereotype Hollywood sells. His own story is one of learning to embrace life's suffering, of accepting that pain as a path to finding peace with it and letting it go.

After all this time, and even after speaking with him to help publicize scholarships available for his workshops at the Omega Institute this year, I still hadn't read his book. But I opened it this week and ended up reading for an hour or more as I drank my coffee in the morning.

I like AnShin even better now.

At Hell's Gate is a powerful story, simply told, of one man's attempts to transform his life while discovering who he is and learning to accept what he finds.

AnShin doesn't preach, he doesn't try to get anyone to embrace Buddhism, spirituality or even discuss the politics of war. What he does talk about are the roots of violence, and how each of us must accept the fact that war begins within us. Each of us, he points out, has our own personal Vietnam.

I've been confronted with the anger and fear that people I care about, smart people, display over issues that, to me, seem about nothing more than basic human rights. The right to marry. The right to have access to health care. The right to decent working conditions. And my reaction has been anger, too. Anger at what I consider a Darwinian view of humanity, anger at the conviction that everything on this planet was put here to serve a small, superior group of humans. Anger at the increasingly strident and nasty tone of the debates, both in my own life and on a national level.
I react to anger with hopelessness.

AnShin offers techniques to help deal with anger, with fear and with the emotional scars of violence. He doesn't suggest you chant it away or smoke it out with sandalwood incense. He urges you to breathe - to notice the anger, watch it gather strength, then, observed but unexpressed, watch it dissipate. Note where it comes from. Act on it only from a place of compassion and connection...not a place of superiority. It is a mighty workout - and one that could change the world if we each participated. AnShin writes that we cannot wait for the rest of the world to join in - all we can do is change ourselves.

At Hell's Gate ends with one of the most powerful paragraphs I've ever read - a paragraph urging each of us to find and accept the roots of suffering in our lives, understand them, and embrace life as it is, not as we wish it was or wish it might be.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BIBrDWT8lkw