These woods are lovely, dark and deep

Yesterday my daughter suggested we make an excursion together to a bookstore so she could buy the sequel to the book she had just finished. She already knew the sequel wasn't available at our local bookstore, so this trip would necessitate, at the very least, a drive over the bridge to the next town, and, more likely, a trip to the Barnes and Noble at the mall in Silverdale -- a good half hour to 40 minutes away.

It had begun snowing -- just flurries, nothing sticking -- so I checked the weather report. It all looked good -- temperatures were expected to hover around 36 -- so we headed out. We got to the Poulsbo bookstore just as it closed (at 4 on Sundays, apparently) so we decided to keep going to Silverdale.

By this time the temperature had dropped to 32 (so much for weather reports), and just as we were climbing onto the highway I noticed the snow was starting to stick and the lawns were turning gray. Oh, well, I thought: it's only 10 minutes away; I can deal.

Though I spent the first half of my life dealing with winter snows in Chicago and New England, it rarely snows in the Pacific Northwest. I've managed to avoid driving in snow for many years now, and though I have front-wheel drive, I'm definitely out of practice. But I could see that the snow on the road was starting to thicken and the cars were beginning to slow down and move into single file. All the signs pointed to what was sure to be a challenging ride back, and I could feel myself grow increasingly tense as I drove.

To release some of the tightness that was beginning to tie me in knots, I decided to try driving from that calm space within me. But what emerged, when I sank into that space, was not calm, but instead an almost blinding awareness of what was making me so tense. I realized that as I was driving I kept imagining either other cars spinning out (and into me) or my own car spinning out and into a ditch.

And from that calm space within, I could see that some part of me had been anxiously looking at those recurring images as harbingers of the future (which was terrifying me) when actually they were flashbacks to the two worst accidents I've been in, both of which occurred in snow -- a sort of Post-Traumatic-Stress syndrome.

We arrived safely at the bookstore, found Ali's book, and headed home, and, indeed the roads had gotten really bad in the interim. But now, having, as Pema Chodron says, leaned into my fears, I could see those images for what they were, and the tension had gone. I found I was able to trust my driving and the driving of those around me, and, though progress was extremely slow, we returned home without incident. Best of all, when I stepped out of the car I felt none of the stiffness that comes when driving with all my muscles clenched.

There is a part of me that loves the peace I find in meditation and longs to stay there, to avoid engaging with the hard stuff of life. But as Robert Frost says in his poem, "Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening":

The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

The fact is that the promise of faith is not that life will be pretty, or easy. The gifts of life are rarely handed to us on a silver platter, and we rarely get to just sit still and appreciate them. It's not that they come with strings, in the now-you-owe-me sense. But they do seem to emerge only in the context of living, of engaging with our challenges; when, in going those unavoidable miles, we stop to look at what we ourselves -- our brains, our assumptions, our egos -- are bringing to a situation, what our unacknowledged issues are contributing to our suffering.

The snow didn't go away. But my reaction to it shifted. And that, as Frost says in another poem, has made all the difference.

Twinkle, twinkle

Our sermon this morning was about keeping Christmas; about the fact that, though there are 12 days of Christmas, we've mostly packed it all up by the end of Christmas day, and the tree is often down before Epiphany arrives.

Why is that, our preacher pondered: are we afraid of that promise of hope? Are we afraid of the responsibility?

I don't presume to have answers, but then -- our tree is still up, though the boy scouts were out collecting them yesterday. And our Christmas lights -- well, as you can see from this first photo, taken last August, we may turn them off but we never take them down.

I can't claim any noble reason for that, only that I like them -- like the little bit of sparkle they provide, the promise of snow, the promise of light...

So it could just be laziness, or reluctance to risk more climbs up and down a rickety ladder. But maybe it's more than that: a deep-seated desire to keep the hope of Christmas alive, to allow the magic and promise to continue framing our days and views.

Whatever the reason, for now the lights are still on. And the sunrise seems even lovelier this morning, viewed through these twinkling stars.

A visit from the Should Family: those pesky inner demons

At one point in The Wisdom Jesus, Cynthia Bourgeault quotes a Baptist theologian, who says the whole of his Sunday School teaching can be summed up in one phrase (said in a strong Texas drawl): "Jesus is nice, and he wants us to be nice, too."

Okay, so I get that that's an over-simplification. But how can I justify my time spent blogging and meditating if it doesn't make me a nicer person? I mean, if I'm spending all this energy trying to take on the mind of Christ, trying to move into that space where I am at one with God and with humanity, wouldn't you expect that I would be, at the same time, becoming more tolerant of the people around me?

Because it doesn't seem to be working that way -- at least, it wasn't yesterday. I wonder now if it all began with the image I used yesterday, and the way it reminded me of retreats and how they feel. However it began, the fact is that I spent much of yesterday holed up in my little office (where I have to confess I had NO IMPORTANT TASKS to busy myself with), and everytime I came up for air I found myself resenting the interruptions from the other members of my household.

WHAT ON EARTH AM I DOING THAT IS SO IMPORTANT? NOTHING!

And shouldn't the really rich wonderful work that I get to do in the morning before they all wake up be somehow filling my cup, so that I can just be happily overflowing into the rest of the day?

My neighbor sent me a quote a day or two ago from Ortega y Gasset: "A bore is one who deprives us of our solitude without providing companionship." But when she first told me about the quote, she described it slightly differently. Instead of the word "companionship" she used some other phrase that really resonated with me, something that implied they were giving us something we want or need. And apparently I don't need companionship right now.

Because I can't say the interruptions aren't providing companionship: they are. In almost every case (with one exception, which may have been a bit of a last straw, when, fiercely hungry and having already asked if we could go out to dinner and been refused that option, I had to drive into town to the restaurant where my DAUGHTER got to have dinner in order to deliver a cellphone one of our departing houseguests had left behind) the interruptions are ALWAYS offers of companionship: "Can I show you this" or "Listen to this, isn't this funny" or "Let's do this together." But for some reason, yesterday I resented them all. So if Jesus wants us to be nice, it isn't working for me.

To those members of my family at whom I snapped yesterday, I offer my humble apologies. And for the rest of you who read this blog, HELP! Yes, I understand that sharing a house for weeks on end with three other people and whatever additional friends are floating around can be stressful when you're used to having a lot of alone time. But shouldn't all this meditation stuff be making it easier for me to accommodate the constant shifts in routine?

Ah, it's another visit from the Should Family. I should have known!

Retreat without leaving

I'm not quite sure why this photo calls to me this morning. It was taken a few years ago at St. Andrew's House, an Episcopal retreat center on the Hood Canal in Washington; this is the Great Room, where we could rest or read or socialize between class sessions.

I suspect I am drawn to the peace of it, to the warm colors within and the cool colors outside; to the quiet acceptance of the two readers, each lost in their own pondering; to the graceful domesticity of the scene.

One of my friends confessed yesterday that he cannot give himself permission "to just sit and read," and I realized that I have trouble with that, too. For me reading is something I mostly do when I am drinking my morning coffee or falling asleep at night. Which may be a part of why I love going on retreats: it's a time when I allow myself to take a break from the constant busy-ness -- to stop and sit; to listen, to read, to walk, to daydream, to ponder -- to allow new truths to well up from within.

Wouldn't it be lovely if we could give ourselves permission to build that sort of retreat time into our daily lives? Perhaps that should be another New Year's Resolution...

At one with Mary

It is the first day of the new year, and I feel like I am meditating for the first time. How could I have been doing this for so long without having internalized the truth that lies at the core of all this work?

As I rest now, at the center of being, no longer looking outside myself for the Divine, there is a fullness welling up from within that embraces everything around me. And when I had finished I came to my computer to find this image -- which seems a perfect place to begin the year.

She's here because last night, after the fireworks were done and the adult guests had departed, I checked my email one last time before heading off to bed. And one of my fellow bloggers, Kim, had left a message for me entitled "Looking for Mary."

In response, I began absent-mindedly poring over some of the many images of Mary on my computer, and it was one of those folders of Mary images that was open when I returned to the computer this morning after my meditation.

Somehow I had never noticed this one: A Mary who is open, her hands raised in blessing and acceptance; a Jesus encircled within her breast. This could be Mary anywhere along the journey: Mary accepting her role of conception; Mary pregnant with the Divine; Mary holding or raising the infant Jesus, or even Mary knowing after his death that his spirit lives on within her. It feels to me the personification of all our most familiar Mary moments, both the biblical ones:

Hail Mary, Full of Grace (Luke 1:28)

And she kept these words and pondered them in her heart. (Luke 2:19)

My soul doth magnify the Lord and my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour,
For he hath regarded the lowliness of his handmaiden.
And behold, from henceforth all generations shall call me blessed,
For he that is mighty hath magnified me, and holy is his Name. (Luke 1:46 - 49)

And of course this more contemporary ode:

When I find myself in times of trouble,
Mother Mary comes to me,
Speaking words of wisdom,
let it be.

And in my hour of darkness
She is standing right in front of me
Speaking words of wisdom,
let it be.

Let it be, let it be, let it be.
Whisper words of wisdom,
let it be.

We cannot know what the new year will bring; we only know that what has gone before is no more. We are left with now, standing, open, waiting with patience and acceptance for what will be. May we be like this Mary, holding it all safely within our hearts, what was and is and is to come.

Amen, and Happy New Year.

Come in from the cold

There stands, on my mantle, a lovely wooden angel with wire wings, her head tilted slightly up, her hands outstretched, not in supplication but in receptivity. She is often the last thing I see before I close my eyes in meditation, and I've often imagined myself in the same posture as I move into that receptive space.

But this morning I realized that yet another piece of what I know in my head has not yet planted itself in my heart. Because that receptive posture, charming and humble though it may be, still implies that the Divine is something that exists outside and above me. I have been, for these last few months, trudging through the cold, watching my breath, breathing in the divine spirit as if furnishing an empty cabin: I never stopped to notice the light within, never really internalized at the heart level what my head has known for some time to be true, that this space is already occupied.

Perhaps it was only this wintry darkness, this sense of having been out in the cold, that has finally allowed me to see at a deeper level that the light and peace, warmth and hope I've been longing for is already there waiting for me.

Reaching for the color

Several years ago a friend whose son is rather a handful told us he'd taken the boy to stay at a farm for the weekend.

The boy, who was in his early teens at the time, had grown up surrounded by electronic gadgets and video games, and had a great deal of trouble adapting to an environment which had none of those attractions, no TV's, and no computers.

After a time the increasingly frustrated teen apparently threw a tantrum, and the phrase he kept screaming over and over was this: "I am not in my happy place! I am not in my happy place!"

Remembering that incident, I am struck again by the aching poignancy of that cry. There is a self-awareness in it, an attempt to articulate a frustration that remains wordless in many of us.

But what makes it particularly sad is our understanding that his awareness of self is clearly not yet balanced with an awareness of reality, of other, of place, culture, or responsibility; with the discovery that not only do we not always get to live in our "happy place," but that for the most part society doesn't really care if we're not in that space.

My mother-in-law once informed me that the job of a parent is to civilize her children. The dictionary defines civilize as "to cause to develop out of a primitive state," but for her that meant raising children to be responsible, cooperative, productive, contributing members of society. The primitive state, as she defined it, was self-centered; the civilized state would be other-centered. And the sad thing is that many of us civilized folk are as out of touch with our self centers as that young boy was with the realities of civilization.

I got lucky this morning. I began reading Cynthia Bourgeault's book, The Wisdom Jesus, and for some reason my meditation period this morning was clearer, less cluttered, more like a "happy place." And for me that means that there were moments in the time that were filled with color.

Color has always been a key indicator for me: as I have mentioned before in this column, I am a synaesthete, so in my world words and letters and thoughts and dreams all have characteristic colors. Which means that when I am making decisions, I have learned over time to select the choice which comes draped in color; to walk away from the browns and the grays. And meditation lately has been definitely mired in browns and grays, so it was a delight to find the rainbow again, if only for a moment.

The trick is to understand that sometimes the only way to the color is THROUGH the browns and grays. And how can we ever know when to leave and when to play through; which colors are false and which colors are true? As I watch my marriage and my meditation practice both cycling through their seasons of dark and light, dullness and color, I also watch my friends as they progress through jobs and relationships, and I find myself aching both for those who leave too soon, always drawn to the appearance of color elsewhere, and for those who stay too long and forget there even IS color.

Somehow we need to find the balance -- between dark and light, between colors and grays, between self and other -- because I think it may be in that balance that the truest, richest, deepest, most saturated colors live. And I suspect that working to achieve that balance is not just the work of a parent -- it's the work of a lifetime.