human stuff in the "highest pitch of loveliness..."

"Life has a loveliness to sell, all beautiful and splendid things, blue waves whitening on a (lake), soaring fire that swings and sways...holding wonder like a cup."  Sara Teasdale

We arranged tea. I drive to a place that holds memories for the last time. My lovely ex is not there any more. His wife and I have tea periodically. Driving the half hour out to their beautiful home, I knew it was the end of an era. She is selling the house.

The afternoon is warm as the September breeze plays with my hair through the open window. The sun flashes its fabric off the car ahead, light is lacing leaves and wavelets on the cool, blue lake are wearing little "white mustaches".

Divorce leaves its fragments. Some visits at first were an adjustment -- family dynamics, my own dynamics. Those were the early days, things mattered. I was always well received yet life can get in the way of itself, as can I.  At times, I could hardly get in touch with the tangibility and exquisiteness of a simple caring. I knew in my head I cared yet my regular self, my ordinary self dragged along things I thought mattered -- not this loveliness of now I've stepped into or has it just stepped into me?

Coming up the drive, on a little hill sits their beautiful house with it's "for sale" sign. I look through the glass in the back door. She is at the kitchen table in a patch of light basking like a cat with its face to the sun, not noticing I had arrived. Knocking on the glass, she turns, smiles. The tea is steeped.

Somehow on the drive, I had taken a step back into a larger reality, into another self where all was poignant sentiment yet not sentimental. Surprisingly, I had stepped out of the human stuff and those times when things mattered into a caring, the impersonal-faceless kind and yet the personal kind. An awareness of things I had missed because things had mattered -- the situations, the circumstances, the appearances.

I drove away after tea thinking, if only I could have done it all in this "highest pitch of loveliness."* instead of, in things mattering. What had I missed? If I had only known there is a place where human fusses are saturated in light, do not matter in a reality larger then my smaller existence. So much does not matter, is not material, is not real. As Einstein, observed, "Concerning matter, we have all been wrong. What we have called matter is energy, whose vibration has been lowered as to be perceptible to the senses. There is no matter."

On my way home, I pass again the blue lake resting in the late afternoon stillness. The loveliness of this day, the velvet-caring have a perfection, a lightness of heart, spirit and a touch of melancholy. My last trip. I know in deepest knowing, "Oh, this is all that counts, ever counted or will ever count. Situations, circumstances, polarities do not exist, certainly do not matter, were not even substantive. The only thing alive is this dancing right now behind my rib cage -- light, essence, zing, sparkle and radiance. A place I want to be in when I make my transition, a change from particle to stardust. A place where it doesn't matter.

photo source: fotolia.com
* Alfred Sisley

This train is bound for glory...

"This train is bound for glory...no high flyers, no mid night ramblers..." *

Arriving at the hotel to sign in I noticed directly ahead stands a piano resting in all it's majestic splendor. The invitation is out. Coming back to the hotel after the first day touring Copenhagen, seeing the sculpture of the Little Mermaid, visiting the National Art Gallery that piano sat there flirting with me. 

After two years of lessons I now can chord a number of songs. I brought two pieces of music to practice on the pretend piano in my head.  Yet here is a real piano just waiting to be played. I could not resist. Counting out loud "one and, two and", I did not want people in the lobby thinking I could seriously play piano.

And so it began, each afternoon after touring the city, there was the piano waiting -- just for me. On the second afternoon several people sat close by. In the middle of playing "one and, two and" then plunk, plunk I thought how boring for them and for me. So I tried a song, singing and then humming softly, very softly chording to a little Nora Jones, Johnny Cash -- allowing myself to relax, a little.

After the third day of playing, I went out in the court yard (just off the lounge) to do some writing.   This woman looked up from her wine and asked if I was the piano player. Answering with a quiet, little yes, I emphasized "just practicing." She told me she enjoyed it. I wondered if she detected the shock on my face. After a little chat, she and her husband asked me for supper. With more confidence. I went back to my room and wrote out a few favorite songs for my next "practice".

By Sunday, coming back from breakfast and feeling bolder, I could not pass that piano without playing something. Again starting with "one and, two and" I could feel all these fun songs waiting. The foot tapping "Five Foot Two" was begging to be played (the song I messed up in my first music concert three months ago**) and there were others bubbling up behind it. Letting my music-joy take over I could feel these "Boots (music-notes) Are Made For Walking", then came the zippy, little foot- tapping "Five Foot Two" and there, flying in on the wings of feeling came "Some bright morning...I'll Fly Away". Changing pace, I closed my eyes and swayed to the plight of the "Lonesome Whippoorwill" who truly sounds too blue to fly.

"This Train Is Bound For Glory" followed and, indeed, I had arrived. With my musical deficiencies I certainly was "no high flyer, no mid night rambler," but changing octaves, adding some of my teacher's new "fancies", runs and pick-up notes -- I was in love, joy and fun. Glancing sideways I noticed an audience. Unlike freezing at the concert, I didn't care. I was just feeling the music -- a little soft rhythm, a smart, racy-beat.  And a brand new feeling, I am one of those  "piano-bar players" like in the movies. (The bar was only ten feet away.)

Next morning a young man passed me as I was starting my exploration of the city for the day. He turned and said, "Your music in the lounge and your playing are lovely." I walked away thinking,
he repeated the word "lovely", twice! He is right, I had felt lovely. I thanked him.

This morning I am leaving for home. My map of Copenhagen is criss-crossed with yellow high-lighter. I have been where I wanted to go. In the taxi to the airport I feel the gratitude for the hard work of it, the cultural education and even for surviving the countless bicycles one had to dodge at every corner. Through the week, I had muffed some chords, missed some singing notes, forgot some lyrics but when I lost myself in the music it didn't matter, that piano had ridden me to glory. I had discovered a part of myself that felt totally new. I had been a "piano-bar player" in Copenhagen for a week and I loved it.

* A traditional American gospel song first recorded in 1925. It's origins are unknown.
**  June 26th writing: : "Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it."

"I don't care" has an honored place...

"let all go -- the small middling

tall bigger really

the biggest and all

things -- let all go

so comes love" e.e. cummings

An acquaintance, a lovely person, tells me she has several people in her life that seem to be constantly correcting her or "putting her down." Unfortunately, her situation is not unique. Benign actions such as merely forgetting the keys, not wanting another round of visitors or just buying something new can elicit such retorts flung at us like condemnations: "You forget everything", "You'll never change" or "You're a spender." Even in a situation when an honest "No" is said rather than an artificial "Yes", one risks being accused by another or by an inner voice of being a negative person.

Minor fault-finding by those close to us can rob us of our personal power, self-value and our sense of well-being. If targeted often enough we start second-guessing ourselves, leaking value and feeling belittled. As my acquaintance talked, like a beautiful bouquet with no water, she began to wilt, her shoulders slumped.  The laugh she came through the door with earlier was gone. She believed the judgments flung at her. However, I know her to have normal memory, is a care-giver and is cautious about her money. Yet, these judgments erode her personal value like acid. In her defense she concluded wistfully,  "I am a caring person. I want him to be happy, to feel good. I don't want to be a negative person." To which I added, "Maybe a deeper soul-learning is, "I don't care."

These criticisms-judgments can be delivered in the guise of a "suggestion" from partners, family, adult-children or friends. If they are merely observations my acquaintance may need to self-correct but first, it is to discern where the words come from. Whether one forgets, does not want to be social or is simply wrong is not the question. What matters is the intention of the speaker. Where do the words come from? Why does he/she need to devalue, to be critical, to take the other down a "peg or two"?

 Far too often such complaints issue from the accuser's own projections, unhealthy needs and lack of real happiness. As a result, when anyone gives someone else the responsibility to make them powerful, happy and good as the criticizer does, those needs are dysfunctional and cannot be met. Only self-reflection, hunting one's own darker corners, taking responsibility for one's own personal empowerment and well-being fulfill authentic needs. When the criticizer does not self-reflect, the reason might be (often sub-consciously), "If I can get you to meet my needs, if I can feel powerful by having power over you, out there, I will be happy. Then I don't have to do my own deep diving, my own growth work." And sadly, our response, we who are kind and caring, who are the need meet-ers, the great pleasers fall for it. When unhealthy needs are not satisfied, their demands grow larger because pain bodies are big eaters. They must be fed.*

I had to learn early "not to care" and still feel good about myself. Paradoxically, my mother was my first great teacher, followed by others. She was wonderfully wise, caring and well liked. Yet with me she tried to reclaim part of herself -- a happiness, goodness, and love that only she could discover in herself.  As a result, I never quite "measured up".  Eventually I was in danger of "dying of niceness and the disease to please."  Later on, family, friends, divorce, and parenthood were also my teachers.

Reading the great spiritual teachers, I discovered that inner-detachment, setting oneself free from one's own emotional history is a deeper soul-lesson. I gave up trying to meet others dysfunctional needs/expectations which I had no hope of meeting. At the same time, becoming aware of how the feeling of being honest, meeting my own authentic needs nurtured me and surprisingly, others.

Yet, a caution for my acquaintance; letting go, detaching, and not caring can be mis-interpreted as not relating. "The thinking mind cannot understand Presence and so will often misinterpret it. It will say you are uncaring, distant, have no compassion, are not relating. The truth is, you are relating but at a level deeper than thought and emotion...which goes far beyond relating. In stillness of presence you can sense the formless essence in yourself...(with it's) true caring, true compassion."*

I finally had to let it all go -- "the big small middling tall bigger really the biggest and all things -- let all go dear so comes love." And astonishingly, it did; the unconditional kind, the personal and impersonal kind -- a love that has space, air, detachment, lightness beyond any face, hand, or eye. The irony of not caring was that a larger love waited, as did a deeper feeling of honesty, compassion and expansive freedom. I discovered, "I don't care" is an honored and sacred place in which to live.

*Eckart Tolle

photo source: fotolia.com

crow and dog...

As I turn a corner, a crow is hopping back and forth outside a wire-fence where lives a little white dog, inside a wire-fence. Cawing and barking, a great noise was being made. Both would rush the fence, one inside, one out.  I slowed my step hoping to become invisible. Crow struts forward, teasing? Dog, with little face-fir flying in the breeze, attacks again. Crow hops to top of fence -- caw,caw or ha,ha?

Oh, I see. This is a game. Crow definitely has control -- until dog spots walker, me. White fluffy-fir  rushes my way, barking ferociously -- a fierce monster wanna be. Startled, I step back.

Crow, now ignored, tries the old moves. Dog has new interest, me. I slow down to see how this game plays out. After several disappointing thrusts crow daringly lands inside fence! I am still dog's main attraction. Crow hops closer, caw, caw -- dangerously close, insisting on attention.

Finally, dog notices pesky crow dancing in and out, far too close to little, wiggly tail. Dog turns. Do I see a flicker of aggravation?  Then a quick thrust to dispense with this playmate turned nuisance. Flight escape-timing again, executed uncannily.

Leaving, I look back, crow is strutting the grass safe again, outside of fence.  Do I detect a dash of the peacock in that walk?  I continue up the hill thinking, crow loved that game but did dog? Hmm.

Arriving back home, crow or crow-cousin sits on the telephone pole. Looking up, I wonder, what game would you play with me?

photo source: fotolia.com

we are the lover living in front of things...

Jacques Lusseyran, a young blind French boy observes, "It is more than seeing, it is tuning in...allowing the current to connect...like electricity. To put it differently, this means an end of living in front of things and a beginning to live with them...for this is love."

In life coaching, people ask, "How do I love myself?" Yesterday I was having tea with an acquaintance. She was showing me photos of two beloveds -- a child who had passed and a beloved who had not. Then she told me of the "great love" she feels when looking at their  pictures.  Her eyes were alive when explaining that she now knows what true love really is. "I feel it." she exclaims. Earlier in the conversation, she revealed, "I can't feel love for myself.", then added a list of personal short-comings. Yet to her family, children, friends, and pet she is an ocean of caring.

Here, sitting across from me is a gifted, creative, intelligent person telling me that looking in the mirror, saying loving things to herself hasn't worked.  She offers herself little compassion and scant understanding. And true, it is difficult to stimulate feelings of warmth and radiant acceptance about one's wrinkles, scars, or regrets. How many situations have I not been perfect in, how many mistakes do I make, how many of those geraniums have I neglected to water? Yet I am the love (as is everyone) that is doing the loving and through which this great river flows. Then little things get taken care of somehow and the big things release a larger understanding and compassion to this little ego-self called, me.

Responding to how she can love herself I observed, "When you look at those pictures on the coffee table, I feel that "great love" you mentioned coming from you not from their images. You are the one emitting that feeling in this room." I suggested she close her eyes, try to feel love (without the pictures or the good memories), wait, allow its warmth to expand in her chest. Continuing I added, "Let yourself down into it, feel it with your ears, your toes and with your breath -- it is you. There is no intermediary, no object outside yourself needed. Let the love that you are, love your wonderfully imperfect self,  let it release its compassion, its larger understandings in you and for you -- allow it space, depth and place.

"Even if love is experienced as grief, a loss of a child or beloved, it is pure love and you are the one doing the loving. Once you wear the path here you will not need to love the self in the mirror, as you are part of the universe loving itself.  Not separate but one, not outside or inside as ultimately there is no outside, inside. We are like mason jars full of ocean set in water with the tops off. Where does the ocean begin or end? Our hearts are every heart, even our own."

As the young blind boy so wisely observed when asked how he "sees" in order to maneuver his dark world, "It is more than seeing, it is tuning in...allowing the current to connect like electricity...(which) means an end of living in front of things..." And this is the love that keeps moving us back into wholeness, ....** Then like the boy, we stumble into undivided living and know we are, indeed, the lovers doing the loving.


** paraphase source, Mark Nepo

photo source: fotolia.com

the birthday of life, love, wing and loss...

i thank You God for this most amazing
day...and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes

(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun's birthday; this is the birth
day of life, and of love and of wing...)   e.e. cummings

My cousin's funeral was yesterday. Having been diagnosed a year ago (two former writings*), she achieved the year she so wanted as she had more life to live, family and friends to love, and business to attend.

In the service, the minister told us she called a couple of weeks prior, asking him if he would conduct her funeral which would be imminent. This request by the person, plus the "matter of fact" time-estimate was a  new experience for him. He wanted to meet with her.  She apparently was not too interested but agreed, adding, she did not want an eulogy. "People already know what I do. I don't want it about me, I want it about God." On such visits he usually tried to make a person's transition easier, offering comfort but not this time. She had it "well in hand" and heart. Responding to her request he spoke about her "joy de vive, tour de force" and her aliveness -- in other words her god-ness.

A few decades ago, working in hospice, I walked with people on that transition-part of their journey, held numerous hands, looked into misty eyes through my own mist. However, I never walked this courageous path with anyone who engaged dying so boldly, selflessly and factually. My cousin, I am sure, had her dark nights, walked through her garden of Gethsemane,** fell to the ground as others have done when considering the loss of earth-hardness, the softness of a cheek and a look from an eye that sees.  Then one might ask as Jesus did, "let this cup be taken from me."

Yet, God bless the flesh. It has been our habitant, our reference point all our lives.  We see through it, experience who we are in it.  And ultimately, we have to let go, deeply knowing/hunching there will be new reference points, new awareness and a larger consciousness to be entered. Thus, at the end of another beginning, may I "raise the bar" as my cousin did and also witness to that "which is natural which is infinite which is yes."

* Two previous writings: "the crossroad" - 06/09/2013 and "death as an advisor" - 29/11/2013

** Christian Scriture: Matt 26: 36-46

photo source: fotolia.com

spreading our sails on the sea of light...

This is what the heart knows (under, through, and above) all words: that beyond our small sense of things a magnificent light surrounds us. Mark Nepo

Summer in Nova Scotia,  I love it.  Through our new screen door a lovely freshness wafts down the hall tinged with the aroma of wild roses, continuing on past this desk, by the piano and out onto the deck. We have a postage stamp front lawn edged with rainbow-summer divinity, flowers. Looking up, I catch the yellow finches, as delighted in the new summer sun as I; criss-crossing in the air as they seemingly play tag around the bird feeder  -- spreading their "sails on the sea of light." *

Summer emits an aroma of lightness, I can feel it, I am lighter. Birds saturate the air with song. I know when they wake and when they sleep. A friend arrives. Her dress is flowing in the breeze, arms wrapped in velvet-warmth. She is happy, laughing easily. My son arrives in shorts emitting a vacation-feel yet he has just worked ten hours. Finches, flowers, friend and child arriving, indeed, the light does dance, "my darling, striking the chords of my love."* I feel it in my bones, in my eyes, in my skin. Even the clouds are edged in this warmth of summer sun -- inside and out.

Imagine, all, at essence, at core, at heart is light. Leaders of the great religions fill millions of libraries around the world with this message. Everyone of them witnessing it while walking in and with their personal tragedies. Jesus stated clearly, "I am the light of the world." When Buddha was dying his student wept feeling the light on earth would be extinguished -- yet the reply was, "Anan, Anan, be a light unto yourself." Mohammad after his experience of enlightenment observed, "To the light I have attained and in the light I live."

I know I am light, that we are all essentially light. I know that beyond my small sense of things a magnificence does surround me, is me at core. Yet, the problem is, rather than catching glimpses of it, I want to be living in the feeling of it, having that as my "home base" rather than catching it on the wing different times of the day. I want to know how I can thin my veil, wear a path, awaken my senses enough to experience the trickle of joy, a warmth that begins to thaw me in the moment.  I want thoughts that spread my wings on the sails of light, and like Tagore, shatter into gold every clouded thought.

Then comes a luminosity, a caring, an awareness of exquisite Presence. I feel a smile, a laugh, a giggle birthing. Mirth, "my darling, is spreading from leaf to leaf."* And, I take some hope as my grand daughter who is four asked me the other afternoon, "How come you are "laughy", Grandma? I might reply, "It is the reflection of your own light, Grand daughter."

photo source: fotolia.com
* Gitanjali by Rabindranath Tagore, Novel Peace Prize, 1913