Leaf Floating in a Puddle

I was blessed to spend the weekend at a "no-frills" meditation retreat at the Howell Nature Center with nine others. The format for the weekend is silent practice. In fact, you have precious little free time, but I found amazing freedom.

The schedule mixes sitting meditation with active meditation, and much of the weekend was cold and rainy, so I practiced walking meditation up and down the stairs, sometimes with my eyes open, and sometimes with them closed; sometimes going backwards with eyes closed. It was my version of being led on a trust walk, only there was no other doing the leading.

During the Friday evening opening I learned that a woman I had met on two previous meditation retreats had died in March. I remember her as a wonderful spirit. I knew she was undergoing treatment for breast cancer but I admit that I was stunned to hear of her transition.Godspeed, Shelia....

I kept my phone plugged in, watching for text messages from my friend Carol, who was bedside by her 27 year-old daughter, Lizzie. (See previous blog) I knew the family had been called together and the process of easing Lizzie off life-support had begun.

On Sunday morning, the weather was cool but it had stopped raining, so I went out-of-doors for my walking meditation. As I turned the corner, coming out of the parking lot, following the "wrong way" signs, I saw this amazing piece of art: a single heart-shaped leaf was floating in a mud puddle. The puddle was surrounded by gravel, each piece seemingly having been placed there by some artist for its sheer aesthetic value. The tree silently standing watch had been reflected in the water in such a way you could imagine you were seeing the arteries from that heart.

It was so beautiful, it almost took my breath away.

I had the immediate knowing, "Lizzie is free."

For sure, much of my weekend was tinged with the humble gratitude for my own life. I was reminded of the answer my friend Rabbi Rami Shapiro provided in his column (Roadside Assistance for the Spiritual Traveler) to the question, "What happens when I die?"

Where does an ice cube go in a tub of warm water? You are the cube, God is the water. For a while you seem separate from the water, but eventually you melt – you die – and discover that you, too, are water. Have fun being a cube; just don’t forget that all cubes are water, and everything is God.

I had previously shared with Carol another of Rami's columns about our transition from this life:

Imagine that the universe is a rope and you, [and Lizzie], and all things are knots in that rope. Each knot is unique, and all knots are the rope. When we die our knot unties, but the rope that is our essence remains unchanged: we become what we already are.

Life after death is the same as life before death: the rope knotting and unknotting. The extent to which you identify with a knot is the extent to which you grieve over its untying. The extent to which you realize that the knot is the rope is the extent you can move through your grief into a sense of fearless calm.

For me, the rope is God, the source and substance of all reality. When [Lizzie] dies she relaxes into her true nature, and realizes who she always was and is: God. I believe this realization comes at death regardless of who we are or how we live.

As I pulled into my driveway, this message popped in from Carol, "Lizzie made a peaceful transition around 2:45 pm CDT. Her husband (AJ), his mom (Linda), Lizzie's older sister (Amanda), and I were there holding her hands." Godspeed, beautiful Lizzie...

Because I was alert to messages from Carol, I had my iPhone with me on my walking meditation. I am so thankful the sacredness of nature's artwork was captured to be shared....

Hands and Hearts

Every day I say prayers for those I know are going through challenges of life. Sometimes is it for one of my grandchildren, navigating the potholes along the road from childhood. I maintain contact with friends and with colleagues and several "prayer circles" so I often share those requests for support. Prayer has been second nature to me, but since my own surgery in November, I realize how palpable that healing intention is. 

Today I received a tender, touching, intimate photo of a my friend, holding the hand of her gravely ill thirty-something daughter. I can only imagine the agony of sitting bedside day-after-day, longing for a liver transplant, yet knowing that today your child is too ill to receive the very organ that is the hope for her life to be a viable option.

The following poem was written to honor my dear friend and her beautiful daughter, two women for whom I pray today. Two women whose hands and hearts are entwined in this sacred journey of their souls. It is a journey too profound for words.

Heart Breaking

Sitting here holding your hand

Heart breaking

Can you hear me calling you, asking you to stay a while

Where are you

Do you still dream

My mind wanders, but there is nowhere to go

Escape is not possible

Tears falling from my eyes

Heart breaking

Do you know I am here with you

I am here

I still dream

A Writer is Born

Cover of Encore Magazine, picked up April 4, 2013, at breakfast book club. 

 

 

 

 

At the age of 12, poet George Leslie Norris (1921-2006) says walls began to speak to him and his life as a writer was born! As he tells it, "I put my finger on the wall and it was rough and I could feel the individual grains, and then I put my hand against the wall and little grains fell to the ground, tiny things, and I suddenly knew that my life was going to be the recognition of solid things like this and making relationships of the real world, of the material world, and that the only way to do that was to have the words that stood for stones and rocks and mountains, and that the rhythms would create the formation of such things, and I was going to do this all my life"

I have loved Nature deeply for years, and I now find myself being called to love the Earth as though she is an entity. When I am very still, I can feel her heart beat, and I am inspired to write about the passion I feel as I honor the truth that my life as a writer has also been born.

How is it that my senses are so acute to you? Are we connected on some mystical plane that is hidden from both you and me? 

I breathe and it is your breath I catch. I stretch my dawdling body and feel the sinews of your thighs tighten around me. I am held in the loving memory of your touch!

Does our being together stretch beyond time and space? Can we actually be present with one another when our bodies are separate? Is this sensation of oneness madness at my door or a peek into reality?

I dance with your presence and heat begins to rise within me. Oh, you are able to make me come out and play when my desk is piled with work and my phone is ringing! You can capture my wings and spread my legs at will! You are the devil himself come to force me to face the desire I have long denied!

I cease to struggle against the yearnings. I begin to fondle my thoughts and allow the memories to wash over my barren flesh. Hunger and thirst fade into lust. I long to be held by these memories and to merge into them in such a way that I am blind to anything else…

Double rainbow seen out my front window November 9, 2012.

 

Today, as I am here in Southwest Michigan working on the computer, I am looking out my window watching the birds feeding. The male Cardinal seems very red, the Goldfinch makes a lovely match to the kernels on the half-eaten cob of corn, and I see the beauty in the iridescence of the shimmering feathers on the head on the male Grackle. I am wondering if the reason writers thrive is because the mundane has somehow become supra-mundane, and you see more meaning in everything, where ever you are.

Move Your Feet

Seen on the door exiting the exam room at Michiana Hematology and Oncology...

The African Proverb, “When you pray, move your feet,” has often been used to encourage Christians, or other people of faith, to take appropriate actions in the world. In fact, faith is intended to guide our choices in ways that is consistent with a greater meaning of life.

As with other things, the truth of this idea is reflected in our physical world. All movement consists of two distinct (and seemingly unrelated) processes: relaxation and contraction. Relaxation is only half the equation for a meaningful life, because contrACTION is also needed. Here are the words to Mountain Top, by singer/songwriter, Amy Grant:

I love to sing and I love to pray
Worship the Lord most everyday
I go to the temple, and I just want to stay
To hide from the hustle of the world and its ways

[Chorus:]
And I'd love to live on a mountain top
Fellowshipping with the Lord
I'd love to stand on a mountain top
'Cause I love to feel my spirit soar
But I've got to come down from that mountain top
To the people in the valley below
Or they'll never know that they can go
To the mountain of the Lord

Now, praising the Father is a good thing to do
Worship the Trinity in spirit and truth
But if we worshipped all of the time
There would be no one to lead the blind

[Chorus]

Now, I am not saying that worship is wrong
But worship is more than just singing a song
It's all that you say, and everything that you do
It's letting His Spirit live through you

[Chorus]

Worship is more than just singing a song, and if you are to develop a life that has meaning, you are required to do more than to meditate in a vacuum. So as I prepare to reenter the world of my life back in Michigan, here are three actions I intend to take as a way of honoring the relaxation I have been so thoroughly enjoying this winter on Pine Island, here in Florida: 

1.    Get involved with the new Hospice at Home “No one dies alone” program 

2.    Work to bring Art/Poems (collaboration pairing visual artists with poets) to our area

3.   Join and/or create a writers group/s to keep me inspired and writing

Patty Reddy representing Stories at the Women's Expo in South Bend.

It is exciting to face the changes that greet me on my return, one of which is welcoming my sister, Janis Smith, to the office space where I practice at 815 Main Street. She has a massage therapy practice and has rented the room right next to mine. I look forward to being on her massage table, and to our walking downtown together, and sharing life. What gift that we get to be neighbors! Additionally, I will start getting our home ready for sale and start looking for a mobile/modular home in the park on Glenlord Road. We plan to downsize and make it easier for us to continue to enjoy spending winters in Florida.

The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it,

move with it,

and join the dance.

Alan Watts