Monsters for Halloween

It's Halloween, and on Prairie Home Companion this morning (heard as we were heading in to our favorite coffee shop) they listed a few of the scarier demons that could come to your door, including an IRS representative, demanding receipts.

We all have our own ideas of scary demons -- the things we fear most, the things that trigger us and upset us.  I spent my lunch break, in fact, reading about some aspects of this challenge in Parker Palmer's observations about the Five Shadows of Leadership (from his book, Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation).

He calls his list "a bestiary of shadow-casting monsters," and my homework was to read about them and think about where I'd encountered them, and to think about practices that organizations and individuals can put in place to to address or “disrupt” the assumptions and behaviors that reinforce them.

So of course it seems only fitting that as soon as I finished that exercise -- it being Halloween and all -- a couple of my own monsters have peeked out.  So now I get to deal; to clarify what's true and what's not, to assess whether these demons are internal or external, and to figure out how to cope; how to disrupt the automatic assumptions that have leaped forward. 

Not fun.

But then, it's Halloween, and the monsters are prowling!

Going with the flow...

Lighten up! says Pema Chodron in Comfortable with Uncertainty.  "It's sometimes helpful just to change the pattern.  Anything out of the ordinary will help.  You can go to the window and look at the sky, you can splash cold water on your face, you can sing in the shower, you can go jogging -- anything that's against your usual pattern.  That's how things start to lighten up."

Some days you just have to go with the flow.  I'm doing my best to see that as an invitation to lighten up.  Today, for example:  my husband is back from Oregon, so my morning coffee was mostly spent talking, not reading.  And then when I went to wash out my coffee cup I looked out the window (thank you, Pema) -- to see an eagle floundering in the lagoon!

So I went to get my camera and arrived on the deck just as he began doing this massive breaststroke to pull himself to shore.  Didn't capture that, but did get him after he pulled himself out of the water, and then again when he flew to the post at the end of our property to dry off.

Since there's a political sign next to that post -- a close friend is campaign manager for a woman who's running for re-election to the state legislature -- I of course had to send the photo to my friend.  (When she called to thank me, she confided that she'd just been praying for a good omen).  And then, since I was at the computer anyway, I decided to post it on the neighborhood blog.

Once that was done -- since my husband, who got in very late last night, had gone back to bed -- I went to meditate, but the cat wanted in, and when I looked out the window I saw this lovely scene of the sunrise reflected on the Olympics, so rounded up my camera again and went outside.  And by the time I returned from taking this and other photos like it (the cloud formations were glorious) the cat was knocking things over in the kitchen and the kids were up and heading into the shower.

So, yes, meditation didn't happen this morning.  But I did get a chance to do a little reading before my husband came downstairs, and this was my gift for today:

"I am... the divine expression exactly as I am, right here, right now.  You are the divine expression exactly as you are, right here, right now.  It is the divine expression exactly as it is, right here, right now. Nothing, absolutely nothing, needs to be added or taken away.  Nothing is more valid or sacred than anything else.  No conditions need to be fulfilled.  The infinite is not somewhere else waiting for us to become worthy... All is just as it should be, right now.  Not because it is a potential for something better, but simply because all that is is divine expression." -- Tony Parsons, in 365 Nirvana.

So see?  It's all good!

Who are you right now?

I always seem to be teetering on the edge of now: I'm never -- or at least rarely -- fully here.

Thinking about last night's post this morning, I realize it has a fatal flaw: it's all about looking for signs.  And looking for signs is just another way we have of ignoring and devaluing now. 

"Oh," we think, "If this is true, maybe that's the direction I need to take to get to there."  But the problem is that there is someplace other than here -- which is really where we need to be.

When will I learn -- and fully realize -- that what matters is not who I am becoming, or even who I was?  What matters --really matters -- is who I am right now.

When you're at your best

Perhaps because I've been working toward the Patterns exhibit, images like this one fascinate me.

I get that they're not great art, but I've always loved reflections, and reflections of patterned surfaces onto curved surfaces particularly interest me.  What happens to the lines?  Do they become concave, or convex?  Do they lengthen, or shorten?  Smudge together or separate?  And what happens to the colors?

Which is just one more example of this curious phenomenon: when I have the camera in my hand, I become the sort of person I most want to be.

Curious, intrigued.
Present, aware.
Enriched, fulfilled.
Giving, and Sharing.

They always say you should marry the person who brings out the best in you.  Perhaps that should be true of career choices, too: don't do the thing you SHOULD do, or the thing you're GOOD at.  Do the thing that brings out the best in you.

Something to think about.  If you're out of work, and need to look for a job anyway, why not take the opportunity to look for a job that feeds your soul, makes -- or allows  -- you to be a better person -- whatever that might look like to you.

Watch what it is that you're doing when you feel REALLY REALLY good about yourself and who you are becoming.  And maybe -- unless you're under the influence of something mind-altering -- that could give you a clue about who you were born to be.  (Which is just one more reason you should stay away from mind-altering substances: they get in the way of knowing who you could be at your best.)

A chant for you

     Where I am

             is

     Here I am

             is

     Who I am

             is

     What I am

             is

          Now.






 (PS: Just so you know, this is my poem, not a quote (someone asked). It came to me during this morning's meditation...)

What is the pattern here?

So much of what we see is colored by who we are and what tapes are currently playing on our mind radios. I took this picture a few days ago, on my morning walk. I struggled with it at the time I took it, and I struggle with it still.

I love the colors, and loved the perfect radiance of the leaves, the way they flare out from the center, the way the light seems to create concentric circles on the upper leaf, the bold flare of those outstretched fingers...

But what I find it hard to love is the brokenness of the fronds that thrust up from the center -- and I think that's very telling; painfully indicative of my own perspectives at the moment.

Back last summer I spent some time reading Byron Brown's book, Soul Without Shame, and now I'm reading it again, more slowly, for my spirituality class. And this week's assignment has been to notice the judgments we make of ourselves.

... which means I can't help noticing the broken imperfect parts of me, the parts deep at the center that don't have the grace and flow of the rest of my more acceptable bits.  So when I look at this image, that center bit -- the pushiness of it, the torn and tattered edges of it, the lack of symmetry -- becomes a symbol of all that I judge in myself (and find wanting).

So here's the question:  what exactly IS that piece, and how did it come to look that way?  Is it something that was randomly chopped off because it stuck out?  Or is it something trying to be born, a new leaf (and if so, why are its edges already brown?)  I keep thinking that if I could understand the growth pattern of this plant, figure out what role that center thrust plays, I might better understand my own broken and imperfect bits.

Because right now they're sitting front and center, and making it difficult to appreciate the whole picture...

I didn't take the time

This is what I did not do yesterday: sit.

Which is not to say I didn't spend time in a chair; I spent LOTS of time in my office chair.  But I didn't sit.

I didn't walk, either: I set out once, but my cat followed me and the rain started up again, so I headed back.

And all day I felt disoriented, at odds with myself.  I could say it's because my husband is away.  But it's also because I didn't sit.  I didn't take the time to just be -- I was doing, doing, doing, all day; mentally running through my to-do list, creating new items, checking them off, wondering what I'd forgotten, worrying...

I did a lot of writing, and a lot of blog designing.  I took care of tasks I've been ignoring for months. 

But I didn't sit.

And, oh, the relief this morning, when I finally took the time to do the one thing I most needed to do yesterday. I took the time -- made the time -- to sit.  To breathe. To greet again the loving presence that rests within, that which warms me like an eternal flame.  To listen, and empty, and listen again.

And as peace descends, I wonder: what made me think I would even want to go a day without this?