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A Fine Sermon

Osprey: Audubon.org

At times we all have attention deficit disorder to varying degrees, and that may be truer these days than ever.  I try to cut myself some slack when I find I am staring out the window more often, thinking about not much.

My colleagues know that it’s not unusual for me to be distracted to the point of stopping mid-sentence when I see a raptor out of the corner of my eye. So, it wasn’t that unusual that I was captivated by a white-headed bird perched in one of the trees on the lower part of the cliff. Her head made her conspicuous among the leaves in mid-autumnal wardrobe change. From where I watched, she didn’t seem that big until I put a pair of cheap binoculars on her. Whoa. Was she a bald eagle? An osprey?  Come on, turn to me, let me see your face. Alas, she stayed still, lost in her own private worship of the river.

I stood watching her for five or ten minutes, telling myself I needed to get back to work, but I longed to see her more clearly and to watch her take flight, as I knew she eventually would. Did I really have better things to do? I suppose that might depend on who was being asked. My shoulders started getting tight from leaning against the window ledge with the binoculars pressed to my face.  Ah, there, she spread her wings and turned her masked face my way. Oh divine osprey, you lured me, not for the first time. But she was just shifting in her pew, resettling for a longer meditation, and I was becoming impatient, antsy to leave church. 

Here’s the thing about nature’s divine goddesses; they don’t change their rhythms to suit anyone. They will be still as long as necessary, take flight when the time is right and soar when it’s time to soar. I settled in for what turned out to be a long sermon that, in the end, refreshed my memory about natural rhythms, about patience and stillness, really bringing it home when she finally spread those awesome wings and flew north along the Hudson. Hallelujah!

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You Are a Superhero

Several years ago, I attended a dinner party in Washington, DC where there was a lively discussion about whatever political crisis was happening then, perhaps the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal or maybe it was the Weapons of Mass Destruction and the Iraq War. Whatever it was, the volume got louder while I sat mutely wondering how to insert myself. And then our hostess leaned into me and said, “Can you believe what happened in Rex Morgan today?” making me laugh, landing me back on terra firma. For those of you unfortunate enough not to know, Rex Morgan, MD is a long-running soap opera comic strip.

It’s rare this year to be at many dinner parties. Nor do I suppose Rex Morgan, MD could come to my rescue during this time of colossal crises. But when things are as they are—so outsized and incredulous as to be nearly unbelievable—it’s hard for me not to think in mythological, archetypal fairy tale or comic book terms. Dark versus light, good versus evil, real live superheroes gone to the heavens (thank you, Ruth Bader Ginsburg), and not only towns but whole countries in need of dragon slayers to staunch the offering of souls while the Earth beneath us literally burns, quakes and floods. 

What is the meaning of all of this playing out at once—narcissistic leaders, a global pandemic, environmental destruction, racial and gender injustice, economic instability and more? What is the historical, spiritual, cosmic, psychic significance? Oh, it’s been brewing… Are we having a reckoning with karmic justice? 

Part of what is driving a roiling macro anxiety is there are no clear answers, we know we have a long way to go, and also the realization that our sense of control is an illusion. We can strive to respond from our best hearts; that much we can control. And some days our best hearts will be better than others, and that is okay.

We are still allowed to laugh, encouraged to wherever we can find that elixir. And Mother Nature, who has been so unutterably abused by us, still manages to teach us resilience and feed us soul food with her beauty. Woods, here I come. Rex Morgan, MD, perhaps you are worth another look. Friends, family and colleagues who share laughter and fuel hope when mine is waning, call, text, Zoom, social distance with me. Be a superhero when you can. Let me be yours. 

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Magic 8-Ball Tell Me True

Unknown-2If I were a medium, a seer with a proper crystal ball, not a Magic 8-Ball bought at Target for a Halloween costume, would I be able to dialog with you, hear your voice, your laugh, know the endings to the Swedish mysteries we watched, hold your hand and kiss your cheek? Would I be able to locate a thin place or a dream where I could pierce the veil and visit you? Cannot predict now.

If I were a high priestess, a shaman woman, a prophet, a lover or a poet, would I understand why we set the heart of a god on fire? Would I not fear that I, too, might burn to the ground from the hearth of my soul? Would I understand I was already smoldering, combustible, capable of being ignited or igniting? Would I have the resiliency of the redwood gods? Concentrate and ask again.

If I were a character in a video game, movie or book who confronts a multitude of challenges, hazards and foes with my superpowers, would I win the day? And if I didn’t, if instead, I left that world undefended, and I was eliminated from the game, would I be forgiven? Could I reset and have another go? Better not tell you now.

And if on the journey there are many new beginnings, would I meet you again along the way? Would you recognize me? Would we exchange warm greetings, and would we know that every encounter, every bond, however brief, is sacred? It is certain.

And given all, would I, could I, with a lover’s heart expand mine tenfold, a hundredfold to shower love like healing rain? Could I joyfully bathe myself in it like a sparrow in a bird bath? Could hope soar not metaphorically on angel’s or eagle’s wings but incarnate in the souls here on Earth? Could I breathe again? Signs point to yes. It is decidedly so. Without a doubt.

 

 

 

 

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The Color of Our Light

UnknownI am a little preoccupied with souls. The protagonist of the novel I’m writing is a soul named Alex. Alex, dead from an accidental heroin overdose, has a lot of karma to reconcile as well as a jones to be born again that rivals his heroin addiction. Suddenly life is so very precious.

Part of what Alex confronts in his immediate afterlife is his new appearance. He has to ask another soul what color he is.

“Lily, what color am I?”

“Oh, Alex. Any other time I might find your narcissism completely outrageous. For now, you’re somewhat refreshing. You’re a soothing pale blue with a hint of green near the heart. Can’t you see that?”

“Well, yes, and no. I’ve only seen my reflection twice here, and it was cloudy. I see a little color but not as clear as yours.”

When we leave this realm, it is doubtful we will retain the color of our skin. Our physical appearance is here and now which, let’s face it, is not eternity.

I think, like Alex, many of us are feeling a little cloudy these days. We are wrestling with a wound that goes soul level deep and consequently is uncomfortable and impossible to ignore. Good.  What’s also uncomfortable is confronting the reality that our degree of control is an illusion. No one among us can single-handedly stop the pandemic or wave a wand and erase the mirage that the color of our skin makes us different. Nor can we control what others think or do.

As we ride this wave of what we can only hope is a seismic change for the better for humanity, we have the chance to course correct. That much is not an illusion. We need to be Lily-clear with our energy, not cloudy or mystified. Our invisible connection to one another is whisper close. What if we all looked in the mirror and at each other and tried to see the color of our light?

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Love in the Time of Always

dove+with+band“They were together in silence like an old married couple wary of life, beyond the pitfalls of passion, beyond the brutal mockery of hope and the phantoms of disillusion; beyond love. For they had lived together long enough to know that love was always love, anytime and anyplace, but it was more solid the closer it came to death.” Love in the Time of Cholera, Gabriel García Márquez

Love in the Time of Cholera plays out against the backdrop of a cholera outbreak in what is probably Columbia between about 1880 and 1930. The plot revolves around a love story, one that takes a circuitous route after a star-crossed beginning.

As young lovers in a secret epistolary relationship, Florentino Ariza and Fermina Daza are forced by her father to separate. Fermina moves on, marrying a renowned doctor, Juvenal Urbino. Florentino, meanwhile, holds steadfast in his love for Fermina, even after she rejects him and weds another. While he is not carnally faithful, he is in spirit, in heart. More than a half-century later, after both have lived full lives, when Dr. Urbino dies, and Florentino and Fermina are well past their prime, Florentino makes his move again, rekindling the passion from their youth.

During the story Florentino’s mother thinks he is infected with cholera, but it is love that is an affliction that consumes him making him physically sick. When later his mother tells him the only disease he ever had was cholera, his response is “No, Mama, you confused cholera with love.”

Diseases and viruses attack not only the body, but the mind and spirit. It can be hard to hold fast to the spirit now. People are suffering at every level. The usual illnesses and losses do not take a backseat; instead they are a parallel pain to the macro pandemic. The inability to physically comfort one another is another layer of our very personal and collective despair and bewilderment. New worries—economic and otherwise—compound the struggle to find peace, to hold steadfast.

We have our lifeboats—family, friends, colleagues, neighbors, amazing strangers. Bearing witness to the profound dedication and courage around us is at once buoying and heart-wrenching making our unbreakable bond to one another manifest. Nature, throughout it all, reveals anew the beauty and continuity of life, the strength and certainty of it in this time of great fragility.

Beyond love is more love, limitless love. We are called to lead with love always. Everything that happens—whether perceived as good or bad—is a reflection of, and held by Love—the Divine, God, Buddha, Grace, Higher Power, Your Best Self—whatever you choose to name it (or not). Our souls, much like Florentino’s unwavering, fearless love, know no fear. They know that love, our essence, never really dies; it transforms but lives on always.

 

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A Contender at Times

images-1It had been several years since I made my way to the middle of the country in a car, more often looking down on the neatly quilted squares of farmland from 35,000 feet. From the road those squares blurred into a smooth white blanket whose edge began at the nearest rim of vision and extended to an endless horizon. Like most blankets, it was comforting while holding the potential to smother.

Utilitarian understated and underappreciated, that precious land—tilled and toiled over centuries and often enhanced by little more than a farmhouse, a barn, and sometimes a strand of bare black trees—is content to leave first prize in the beauty pageant to the mountains, canyons, ocean, rivers and lakes. But she shows herself a contender at times, unexpectedly bringing a showstopper through a meteorite shower or a stunning view of the constellations in vast, clear skies. Midway through Ohio, I saw a golden yellow sun blow up over the horizon in my rear view mirror like a child’s crayon drawing or a rendering on a cereal box. Distracting in a mesmerizing way, I watched until it became blinding. Little did I know then, it would soon become a longing.

I stayed 12 days in the small town in Illinois where I was raised. I had forgotten the punishing endless sameness of monochromatic gray white winter days. I tried to lean into it, wondering what my ancestors must have faced when they arrived in Nebraska and Kansas all those years ago. Was this land in my bones not only through the nutritional sustenance it had provided but at the deepest DNA and cellular levels?

We all taste the salt of the ocean in our tears and feel mountains well up in our bellies through the crowns of our heads when we are excited and awed just as we feel a ravine-like plummet when we are disappointed, the bottomless echo of a canyon when our hearts are broken. The plains provide a no-nonsense steady kind of love and measured discipline. They are the elusive sweet spot of a quiet mind in meditation. I was sorry to leave, more because of the people than the place. But the reality is I can’t leave either of them, no matter how many miles I drive away.

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Dear Diary

book-4806076_1280Several years ago, I told one of my cousins if I preceded him in death, he should make a beeline to my place and burn any journal he found before anyone else arrived. He said, “I’ll buy you a shredder, and you can take care of that yourself.” And so, he did. And I got busy.

Not all diaries are secret BFFs, confessionals or epistolary therapists. They are written for many reasons, and some have been quite enlightening in a historical, humanitarian or artistic sense.

After her death, through Anne Frank’s recorded thoughts and feelings, the world, including her father, came to know what it was like for her in hiding during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands. Virginia Woolf’s famous diaries are autobiographical as well as where she experimented with and explored her writing. The diary John F. Kennedy kept as a young correspondent in 1945, in which he expresses his opinions about Hitler and the UN, sold for over $700,000. Historians believe it is the only one he ever kept.

Charles Dodgson’s (Lewis Carroll’s) family tore several pages from one of his diaries and mysteriously misplaced some volumes, only adding to speculation about the nature of Dodgson’s relationship with the Liddell girls, including Alice, who encouraged Dodgson to write down the story that became Alice in Wonderland, a book that’s never been out of print since its publication in 1865. Nor has Carroll’s contentious reputation been laid to rest since his death in 1898.

The impulse to keep time and to record fact, fantasy, delight, sorrow, guilt, secrets, and even shame, is not universally felt but sometimes universally appreciated. There is a Wiki page devoted to the many people who were diarists. They include writers, theologians, politicians, philosophers, artists, historians and others.

Whether a diary is intended to be shared or not, the voice is immediate and intimate, implying a sacred trust. The sacred trusts we hold in locked boxes and vaults imo pectore for ourselves and others make each of us diarists. These holy pages can never be shredded, torn out or burned. Along with love and loss, they forever change the narrative.

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New Year’s Blessings, Wishes and Dares

ahappynewyear3 copyRecognize the hallelujah holy you are, the glorious gift of life you embody. Praise all your perceived flaws. Your secret superpower is the blessing of saints and the protection of angels. Proceed accordingly.

The counsel you seek is poised and ready 24/7, desperate for you to ask. Lay down your sword. Offer the olive branch knowing it may be dropped. Speak the truth even if it means rejection. Take the leap of faith. Leave the boulder on the cliff.

Guilt and shame don’t play fair. Be wary of engaging. Wait for inspiration and hope. They will come uninvited to assuage fears and erase doubts bearing light for the next steps.

The present lives on the threshold of then and there in the same place excitement and promise live. Stay in it. Be a cool no-nonsense cat. They know what they are doing. Pretend same.

Earth and sea are home and hearth to all. Care for them. Respect! Reverence! Awe! Be a torch in the heart of darkness, let your presence be a balm to a stranger, of which there are none. Disabuse the illusion of normal used as a whip to judge. Listen. See. Feel. Understand.

A good roux makes the gumbo. Use fresh ingredients, salt sparingly. Serve with French bread, love, and bon mots. Laugh often, even in your dreams. Hug and caress, turn the bitter to the sweet, harbor no grudges, be called good friend. May you find your anam cara.

Risk love in all her compassionate, expansive, endearing, everlasting, exhausting, unpredictable, demanding, fierce, fulfilling, provocative, painful, intense, devout, cheeky ways. Bet the house on her.

I wish you every good wish, every fine dare, blessings in spades. I wish you a Happy New Year.

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Follow Your Heart’s GPS

UnknownBrian Doyle wrote a wonderful book called The Wet Engine: Exploring the Mad Wild Miracle of the Heart. It was in this book that I learned a hummingbird, with its rapid heartbeat and two-year lifespan, has the same number of heartbeats a human has in a lifetime, and that at 5’ long, 4’ wide, 5’ high, weighing 400 pounds, the heart of the blue whale is the largest on the planet. The human heart weighs in at 10-12 ounces and is about the size of a fist.

“Nobody has ever measured, not even poets, what the heart can hold.” So said Zelda Fitzgerald whose heart, one imagines, experienced the gamut of emotions in her extraordinary and ultimately tragic lifetime.

Gratitude and wonder hold hands in the heart, wide-eyed and a little gap-mouthed, ready to be delighted and surprised at any moment. Stress and tension, handcuffed together, frequently lurk uninvited. Forgiveness fights fires. Grief, normally in chambers, engulfs when awoken. Favorite people wander the corridors, places and things take up space in different rooms. And yet, as Zelda suggested, the heart’s ability to expand and hold more is unknown but likely vaster than a blue whale’s heart.

When alert and not operating by rote, the heart possesses the extraordinary vision of a raptor seeing things in focus far and wide, making connections like the way the forces of darkness often push the better angels to prevail, and how the persecuted sometimes carve the path to compassion and change. It has the ability to hear like a moth, to float and flutter with the same grace. The heart feels best with arms widespread, guileless, loyal and loving as a child or a pet.

It truly has a mind of its own, which is in constant communication with the brain in our heads. When heart and head are in sync, we have greater mental clarity and intuitive ability. When the heart experiences emotions like compassion and appreciation, its rhythm becomes more coherent and harmonious. So next time you feel adrift, take a quick minute or two to listen to and follow your heart’s wise lead. She’ll get you where you need to be.

 

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Presence

woodsOne of my uncle’s used to repeat some of his phrases, a diction tic that was endearing. Several years ago, driving my mom and I around San Francisco, he said to her, “Every day something new, right Mary?” And before she had a chance to respond, “Every day something new, right Mary?” I think about that often, because it still makes me smile, and because the simple truth of the statement applies, well, every day.

Over the years, I’ve walked the woods near work more times than I can count. I’ve been in them in all seasons, sometimes almost daily for weeks at a time. Recently, on a moody, gray autumn day, I sought those woods mid-morning to ground me, to bring me back to the present.

I had been in them at first morning light less than 24 hours before. In the short time since, the ground of the clifftop had become filled with tripping hazards, acorns tossed about like marbles on the floor, the walking path freshly blanketed with newly fallen leaves that hid some of the jutting stones. I was forced to pay attention to each step, slowing my pace more than I liked. Deep in the woods, the reckless wind, barely a whisper the previous day, rubbed two trees together, playing them like out of tune string instruments accompanied by a maraca rhythm of rustling leaves.

I entered the woods with a heart and mind as restless as the wind. Regardless of the wisdom of Rilke’s words, it can be hard to love and live the questions now, to be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart. Back at my desk, a few hours later, the rains came. The river that shone with glittering sunlight earlier was a blurry slow-moving slate gray, the George Washington Bridge a watermark of itself. And nothing was any clearer in my head or heart, but it no longer mattered. Every day there is something new, every hour, every minute.