When feelings leak...

This blog usually begins (after a brief meditation period) with me sitting down at my computer and browsing through photos to see what speaks today. It's a bit like a game we used to play that a priest friend called "Bible Bingo," and not so different from those plastic fortune-telling eight balls you buy at the novelty store.

Basically you ask a question, roll the ball or flip open the bible, and see what answers come to light. Only with the blog, the question is always the same: what image should I write about today? And something always springs forth, though I rarely know what I will be saying about it until I begin to type.

So this is the image that surfaced today. I took it long ago, while walking on my friend Karen's beach; this is the cement piling from a dock that no longer exists. The official title appears to be "Blood from a Stone" but now it reminds me of a workshop I attended many many years ago.

I was a librarian in a small town in New Hampshire, and our town manager was something of a bully. If memory serves me, all the town employees were required to attend an anger management workshop (including the manager, I presume) as a way of enabling all of us (especially him) to cope with the challenges of job, life, etc.

I only remember two things about the workshop: pounding a couch with pillows as a way of releasing anger, and this one phrase: "Anger leaks."

Looking at this image now, I would say that its message may well be "emotions leak." We are, many of us, busily keeping our emotions contained much of the time, for a variety of reasons. For women, I think, we are keeping our emotions pent up as a means of protecting our families -- or even as a way of holding the family together: we forget, sometimes, that catharsis, and truth, can be have healing qualities.

For men, taught from early childhood not to cry, the "stiff upper lip" may mask sadness, a variety of fears, performance anxiety, or just a need "not to look like a wimp." And most of us know that in certain situations we are simply powerless to change what is, and just need to "bite the bullet." Those who have the misfortune of living in abusive relationships may well be keeping feelings under wraps for fear of upsetting a delicate balance, or fear of reprisal.

I can tell from all these quoted phrases that society passes this message to us in a lot of different guises, and I am reminded of my mother-in-law's edict: that a parent's job is to CIVILIZE her children, by which I believe she meant to teach them not to be self-centered but rather to function as a useful cog in the machine of community.

What I'm pretty sure she failed to communicate -- which intrigues me, as she was an artist of considerable competence -- is that one way to function as a useful cog in community is to express a feeling that all of us may share. If I say "situations like this make me feel so helpless" or even just "boy, I sure got up on the wrong side of bed this morning -- don't you hate that?" it allows others a safe space to explore their own feelings, because responding and sharing feelings is an accepted way to function as a cog.

It seems to me that this is the function served most commonly by artists -- not just painters, but writers, photographers, musicians, poets, actors, sculptors. We give voice to the unexpressed. Our bishop used to say that that was the job of the church: to give voice to the marginalized, though I'm sure he meant people, not feelings. Whether or not he was successful in that, I would nonetheless agree that this is a sacred charge.

Which may all be a way of saying that today I may be trying to contain a lot; there's a lot on my plate, and one last performance to do as well. And I expect that to function reasonably I'll be determined to keep it under containment, and that, with the inevitability that always attends such attempts on my part, something will leak.

I hope, when it does, that it's not quite as "bloody awful" as the right side of this image, and has more of the blue, healing quality of the leaks on the left. But there are no guarantees...

Back by popular demand

By special request, here is Alex post-surgery. If you look closely you can see there is a second drain to the left of his stitches; you can't tell that his eyes are dilated from the pain meds because I had to use the flash. And I can't photograph him with the dog yet as we have to keep them separate until his drains are removed.

This, of course, presents its own challenges, as the dog has a way of clawing at any door that keeps him separate from me or his cat buddies, so currently Alex is living in our powder room. He gets lonely from time to time, and so we see a paw peeping out from under the door and hear his plaintive cries, which means the dog begins to claw at the door (fortunately this one has no paint on it) and utter sympathy cries of his own.

But the worst is when I am administering the hot compress to help Alex's wounds drain: Nemo (whose full name is Captain Mnemonic) stands outside the door and claws and howls to get in -- mostly because he is painfully jealous of any attention the cats get from me.

As a four on the Enneagram scale -- at least, that's what I'm told I am -- I struggle with envy and jealousy sometimes, too, so Nemo's issues in that area are particularly irritating to me. It's all part of those shadow issues that Ken Wilber clarified so beautifully in the chapter I referred to in an earlier post.

I finally got around to giving that chapter to my daughter to read. Asked about it later, she said that she stopped reading when he said all pressure and stress comes from within. So I attempted to explain (as he would, if she had kept reading) that when people pressure us to do things we are not at all interested in doing, it doesn't create stress for us.

The stress comes when there IS a part of us that wants to do whatever it is. For example, my husband would very much like me to go motorcycling with him (as our daughter just did). I have no problem refusing him because I know from experience that it puts my back out to ride behind him; there is no stress in this decision, and I don't feel pressured about it so it's a bit of a joke between us.

On the other hand I do have trouble shutting our overweight cat, Sophie, out of my office when I am blogging. She likes to sit on my wrists when I'm typing, which makes it very difficult to think or write. But she's getting so many meds right now that she is mostly avoiding us and living under our bed, so the fact that she's willing to trust me and interact with me at all means I would like to accommodate her.

The obvious choice would be to set aside time for her, but as soon as I move away from my desk she claws to escape, for fear I might thrust another pill down her throat; she has control issues. But then, so do I. And my control issues are looming large for me at the moment, as I will be going in for gall bladder surgery on Monday morning. The surgery itself is minor, but it does mean I will be away from home at an awkward time, when both my girls are preparing to leave for college and three animals need constant care and medication. Who will make sure that everything is taken care of while I am gone?

So I'm sure Wilber is right: the stress of all this is surely coming from within me: so many of their issues are my issues as well. It's all a learning experience, isn't it!

For better or worse

Years ago, when I lived on Shaw Island, my landlord (who at the time was living on an island off the coast of Boston) emailed me to say his beautiful Irish Setter was dying of kidney disease.

His descriptions of walking the beach with the increasingly feeble setter were heart-breaking, and he was obviously distraught. So the following Sunday, at the Shaw Community Church Service, when the subject of prayer requests arose I asked for prayers for my landlord and his dying dog.

In those days the community service was run on a rotation basis. About 20 families attended regularly, and since almost everyone who attended came from a different denominational background our worship was quite varied.

Having come from many years of "doing church" as an Episcopalian, I confess I was a bit put off at first by the Shaw services: like many Episcopalians (they/we aren't called the frozen chosen for nothing!) I was a liturgy snob, and it took a while for me to realize the extraordinary nature of the faith that was modeled in that community center every Sunday.

Over time certain specific gifts emerged -- as will often happen in religious communities -- and no matter who was running the service, Melba would play the organ and Marlyn would handle the intercessory prayers. I thought little of it at first -- older women are a staple of religious communities everywhere -- but on this particular Sunday I realized that these were not just any older church women.

Because Marlyn could pray extemporaneously better than any priest or pastor I've ever heard anywhere. Her prayers on behalf of my landlord and his dog were thoughtful, brief, and breathtakingly eloquent; prayers lifted up on behalf of every animal that has ever warmed a human heart, and on behalf of every human heart that's ever suffered at the loss of the pure unconditional love that pets so often provide.

My own heart was opened that Sunday morning to the beauty of those simple prayers, and after that day I set aside my snobbery and learned to revel in the richness of the love that filled that room.

And I mention this today because the cat in this picture, our dear Alex -- one of those rare cats-in-a-dog-suit, a total people snuggler who walks with us and our dog every night, who comes when he is called, loves strangers, and distributes licks and hugs with abandon -- spent most of the day in our vet's office getting some very messy wounds cleaned and stitched.

We're not quite sure what happened, if he was swiped with a huge claw or bitten by a rather large mouth, but he is now safely home, wearing one of those ridiculous collars and missing most of the hair on his back. The two largest of the lacerations have been stitched shut, and two ugly off-white drains project from his back. And all that lovely thick soft rabbity fur is gone; sigh.

The good news is that he is doing well, though quite loopy from his pain meds. The bad news is that I need to give him pain meds and antibiotics twice a day and put hot compresses on his wound. The first hot compress bothered him so much he managed to yank off his collar, so this is clearly even less fun for him than it is for me.

But that's not all. One of our other cats (we have three) ended up in the emergency room with an asthma attack this weekend. She gets eye drops twice a day, 2 antibiotics twice a day, and allergy meds once a day. Bringing the total number of cat med administration activities to 13.

And finally our dog, who is diabetic, has developed skin allergies and managed to chew a hole in his thigh. So he, too, is wearing a collar now; he too gets antibiotics twice a day and allergy meds once a day. And he also gets insulin twice a day. Bringing the grand total of animal meds to 18.

Oh, you say, would you like some cheese and crackers with that whine?

Oh, probably. But it's all part of the package. Animals, like children and husbands, definitely come with a "for better or worse" deal. This may be one of those times when the worse is outweighing the better, but I'm not ready to give up, not yet, anyway.

Like the Shaw Church, this isn't exactly what I thought I was signing up for. But there's a lot of love flying around in spite of the change in plans. There are probably lessons here I need to learn. And I sure am grateful to my family for helping me cope!

Building for the future

Built in 1962, Seattle's Space Needle was intended to symbolize the future, and is apparently one of the most instantly recognizable structures in the world.

Most of the time I see the Needle from a distance -- usually from the ferry -- and it definitely sparks up the landscape, makes the Seattle skyline distinct much as the World Trade Towers once characterized New York City.

But I was driving to a rehearsal not long ago, drove up over a rise and stopped at a stoplight, looked up, and there it was, just looming over me. It was, as you can see, a lovely clear day, and if you look closely you can see the observation deck is lined with sight-seers looking out over the sound to the islands.

Shortly after we moved out to Seattle from Vermont -- some 20 years ago now -- my mother came up from Texas for an Alaska cruise, and part of her tour of Seattle before the cruise took her to the Space Needle. She was enchanted, and took many photos; she even blew one up, framed it, and gave it to us (talk about bringing coals to Newcastle!)

But that was my mom: most every gift I ever got from her was more about her than it was about me. It took years for me to learn to ask for what I wanted, because, as a child, I was told that was incredibly selfish of me.

I still remember the year my parents came to visit, and my mom gave me a birthday present. I opened the package to find a sleeveless mustard-colored silk shirt with fringe hanging from the collar. She admitted she had bought it for herself (she never tried things on in a store; she was too embarrassed as she was quite overweight) and brought it home to discover it was too small.

How she ever thought she would fit into a size 12 was beyond me, and I was a size 10 at the time, so not only was it a color and style I would never wear, but it was too large. I was in my early 40's by then, so I got up all my nerve and said I would prefer not to accept the gift, as it was not my style, size or color.

She didn't speak to me for three days after that, and I remember my younger daughter taking me aside at the time (she was probably about 4 years old) and saying, "Mommy, couldn't you just tell her you like it, even if you don't?"

"Honey, I've been doing that all my life and I'm tired of lying," I replied. The future of the relationship looked pretty grim at that point: as a therapist once explained, pleasing your parents is a matter of life and death for a very young child, and thus becomes a habit that's very hard to break. Years of tiptoeing around my mother had left both of us pretty damaged, with lots of old patterns that were hard to resist.

As Jack Kornfield says, sometimes "No!" is the most compassionate response, but it can take a lot of courage. The good news is that somehow we managed to reconcile before she returned to Texas, and future visits became progressively easier so that, by the time she died, I was able to be true to myself in her presence and she was able to love and respect me for that.

That's one of the challenging things about life: the structures and patterns we built long ago have a way of staying with us. And while most of the time they are just part of the scenery, occasionally they have a way of popping up, looming over us, and reminding us that we still have "stuff" we need to work on.

At times like that it takes a lot of courage and resolution to break out of the pattern, to be honest -- both with yourself and with others -- and to risk the pain that can come as a result. But we do survive, and ultimately the long term gain will be worth it.

Think of it as building for the future.

Outstaring the dark

I remember vividly that one of the pleasures of childhood summers was to stay outside until the last rays of light were gone from the summer sky; playing badminton til you could no longer see the birdie, or playing hide and seek until no-one could be found at all and the dark became a lonely place.

We were reveling in the moment then, enjoying ourselves so much we barely noticed as the light slipped away. And I find now, as summer draws to a close and the light begins to fade earlier and earlier, that I am drawn as I was in childhood to sit up with the neighbors, watching from our back decks and talking quietly as the clouds begin to shimmer, then slide into darkness.

But if we stay out after dark, still staring at a horizon no longer visible, it probably means we are NOT in the moment, and are, in fact, unaware of our surroundings, but rather lost in our own thoughts and concerns, losing track of time. It is, for some of us, easy to do that; to fall into the darkness.

I think of this now because of a line from Richard Rohr's Great Themes of Scripture
that my friend Karen quoted in her blog a day or two ago:

"Mary is the model of faith for every woman and man who believes the Lord's word can be trusted. She is willing to outstare the darkness, however long it lasts."

I'm not sure how old we are when we first come to realize that the sun will always rise, that dark, after a certain number of hours, will always be relieved by the arrival of dawn. I do know that it took me a good many more years to understand that the emotional cycles of life are subject to the same rule; that darkness will inevitably be followed by a new dawning of understanding.

Unfortunately it seems to be taking forever to get that understanding planted deeply enough within me that I can remember it in the darkest times. There always, even after all these years, seem to be those moments when hope begins to shimmer and slide away, like the clouds after sunset.

But it is there, in that space, or perhaps just a tiny bit after, that faith emerges, that blessed gift of spirit sent to hold our hand like a reassuring mother, to bring us comfort and the memory of light until morning begins to glow on the horizon.

Honoring the divine within

Over the years I have seen this gesture many times: a person puts her hands together as if in prayer, acknowledges the person she faces, and, bowing slightly, says "Namaste."

What I didn't know until I read it this morning is that Namaste means "I honor the divine within you." Jack Kornfield, in The Wise Heart, suggests that, as an exercise, it would be good to begin a day with the clear intention to look for the nobility in three people you encounter that day.

Initially it might be best to do this on a day when you are feeling very positive, but ideally you would expand the number of people over time, then expand to doing it on less positive days,and then eventually you might come to honor the inner nobility of every person you meet.

As a photographer I tend to shy away from intimate moments; it seems intrusive. Which might explain why, despite all the photos I have of retreats, there are none of people with their hands in a gesture of prayer. The closest thing I could find to that sort of reverence was this shot, taken when a group of us visited what is reputed to be the oldest and largest tree on Bowen Island, up in British Columbia.

There is a bench placed beside the tree whose back is at a much larger angle than 90 degrees to the seat, so that people may lie back into it and look up into the tree. But one of the women I went with was not content to just admire the tree; she wished to commune with it directly.

It is, I confess, a rather obvious shot -- the phrase "tree-hugger" does immediately come to mind. But it seems to me to be a sort of cross-species version of Namaste; she is honoring the wisdom and divinity inherent in the tree.

So what would be the opposite of Namaste? I suspect there are many answers to this question, but the one that would seem most common to me is to look at another with contempt or suspicion or prejudice; to assume the worst about them rather than to honor the best.

I remember reading about a marriage therapist who practices in Seattle (I believe it's John Gottman at the University of Washington, but I'm not absolutely positive about that). Apparently he will videotape a couple's interaction, and, watching the video, can predict in only a few minutes the potential success of the marriage. And if I remember correctly, one key indicator is contempt: if one partner rolls their eyes or sneers at the other, chances are the relationship is doomed.

So if, as we begin this exercise, we start on a bad day, and cannot bring ourselves to honor anyone's nobility -- perhaps because we cannot find our own -- we could probably start by noticing the times we look at others with contempt.

Just notice. And then see how that feeling resonates within you; feel how your body pulls away from the other, feel the slight shriveling inside. And if you cannot bring yourself to reverse that process, to honor their inner nobility, then at least imagine how you might feel if you could: the softening of the eyes, the opening of the heart.

Someone said to me yesterday -- in a conversation decrying all the sad things that can happen in church congregations -- that churches make Jesus' message so complicated; get so caught up in blame and recriminations; the right and wrong way to "do church."

It's so sad, he said, because at heart, Jesus' gospel is really very simple; it all comes down to loving your neighbor as yourself. And sometimes it seems like church is the last place that sort of respect for the "other" is likely to happen. Curious, when you consider that it is in church you would expect to find that prayerful gesture -- the palms of your hands together -- most often. Perhaps we will never be very good at honoring the divine in God if we cannot begin to honor the divine in one another.

Namaste.

Hair Apparent

For some reason, the subject of hair has been coming up a lot lately. It has something to do, of course, with the fact that I've been spending a lot of time in the backstage dressing room for this play: hair -- and how it looked in the 50's -- is a critical part of each character's costume.

But yesterday I heard one of the girls -- whose hair is very like my daughter's, shown here, only darker -- say that when she straightened her hair on a whim one day while at college, her own roommates didn't recognize her. "I knew my hair was A defining feature of my look," she said. "But that's the first time I realized it was THE defining feature of my look."

There were other hairy moments backstage: one of the boys, who had put too much gel in his hair, was experimenting with slicking it all back instead of parting it. Oberon, who plays an Elvis look-alike, was having trouble getting that one loose curl to hang down over his forehead.

The fairy with the shortest hair put her pigtails in, and they refused to match: one waved sweetly while the other stuck straight out from the side of her head. And another player was remembering one of the summer shows when numerous bald men in the audience had chosen not to bring hats or sunscreen, and the cast found themselves spotting the red heads blossoming around the theater.

But where this all came home to me was when my neighbor arrived on the island in her new wig, an utterly charming concoction which, though gray like her own hair, makes her look years younger and quite lovely. "And he held my hand," she said, smiling sweetly at her husband, who had accompanied her to the salon -- on their 44th anniversary -- to have her head shaved and choose the wig.

Later her husband took me aside. "Sometime we should talk. I want to tell you what an incredible blessing this whole experience has been for our marriage." It was very dear.

Many of us are almost painfully aware of our appearance, particularly during the adolescent years. There is that tension between the desire to fit in and the urge to be noticed, and hair becomes a key player in the drama.

But in the end, it's really love we're looking for. And how nice to know that when love is present, hair can disappear altogether and love will remain, stronger than ever.

Pretty powerful stuff!