Web of Care

I try to meditate every morning; I pray and then I listen. There's one prayer I've been doing lately that feels really good. I think I made it up -- I don't remember anyone teaching it to me.

It goes like this: I ask for a blessing for all the people about whom I care, all the people about whom they care, and all the people about whom they care, on and on until everyone in the whole world is included. Then I ask a blessing for all the people who care about me, and all the people who care about them, and on and on until the whole world is included that way.

I imagine for a moment the whole world connected by a web of care. I inhale all the care that comes toward me; I exhale all the care that goes out from me.

Each act of kindness we perform touches a life which touches another. That is another facet of the same idea.

How do you like this? Tell me if this works for you, or if something else does, or if you have your own variation.

Daisy

I promised some time ago to tell you about Daisy, and after several heavy, serious posts I felt I could use some levity, how about you?

Daisy is my first dog. She was ten when we met two years ago. I never really ‘got’ dogs before. What an ambassador she has been.

She is so good as to be unreal. She is happy to go anywhere, do anything, and take a nap in between. Children can walk right up and grab her ears or stick their hands in her mouth, and she simply lies down to be petted. She will hike for two hours or nap all day.

She absolutely exudes complete peace and gentleness. She is never distressed or anxious.

Her only complaint seems to be if Paul should be downstairs in his studio when I’m upstairs writing. If she wakes from her nap, she may bark ‘woo woo! woo woo!’ until one of us comes and lets her out or sits and pets her. Never mind that she is perfectly capable of coming up to me or down to him. She wants us to be everybody all together, all the time.

Just sitting with her calms me, kissing her velvet nose and smelling her sunshine scent. Honestly, she smells like sunshine. Come on over and have a whiff.

The Eyes of Chamber Street

Last week I used the Chambers Street/World Trade Center subway station for the first time since it was closed after the Twin Towers were destroyed.

I was struck by the mosaic eyes like the one above that are spaced out singly among the regular white subway tiles throughout the station.

Here's where my mind went:
Being underground, I felt as if these were the eyes of the dead of 9/11. Then I thought of the people who jumped out of the burning building, especially those who held hands.

I imagined the moment I cannot imagine. The people holding hands might not ever have even spoken before. It could have been the CEO and the office supply manager, or the woman who got the promotion and the man who was passed over, or the vocally pro-choice democrat and the quiet pro-life republican.

But with death behind and death in front, all that mattered was connection, shared humanity, shared frailty which combined to create a moment of strength and innocence that touched the world.

Then I thought, we are all on that ledge, with death behind and death in front. We pretend we are not, we pretend there is time for petty rivalry, indifference, even disdain. But being alive we are each of us standing on that burning ledge, a place that can only be cooled by the welcome of another's hand.

What are we waiting for to open ours?

Upside-down

I have just finished reading Margaret Atwood’s Cat’s Eye. What a searing gift, truly a master work by a master (mistress?) craftswoman.

My skin crawled, and I twisted in my seat as Atwood opened back up for me the secret world of childhood torture that I thought I’d let go but which still sickened and burned.

I had to turn and look and acknowledge that I still carried old lies about myself, lies contrived from the cruelty of a beloved childhood friend, long long ago.

It had been easier for me to believe that there was something so wrong with me that I deserved this girl’s betrayal, rather than wonder at what pushed her to cruelty.

Since reading Atwood, something has gone click, like a square peg sliding into a square hole after years of trying to push it into a round one.

I realized that the pain I’ve felt and the incomprehension at that girl’s actions showed my health. The cruelty showed her brokenness. It seems obvious to say that now, but what got written on my 8-year-old mind lingered yet.

Sometimes we live in a world where it seems that those who don’t feel are winners, and those who suffer are lost. Thank goodness for writers like Margaret Atwood, who shines a heroic light into those scary, slithering places where we’d rather not look, and helps us put things back right-side-up.

Freefall

I named this blog 'beauty' to avoid the temptation to use it as a place to rant, judge, complain. Before starting it, I asked myself, what do I really have to offer the world? What do I have to give that only I can give? As I often find beauty in places most don't think to look for it, I decided that's what I would write about here.

Thus I haven't written in a couple of weeks, because I have been of late much more inclined to rant, judge and complain. I save that for my near and dear, who can't get away...

I grow weary of this, and this morning I turned to my beloved Rumi for inspiration. I landed on the poem 'Joy at Sudden Disappointment' and the reminder not to 'grieve for what doesn't come. /Some things that don't happen/keep disasters from happening.'

I find this immensely reassuring. It frees me to go full forward toward what I want, knowing all the while that I move within an existing web of cause and effect, not creating one from scratch.

It is a reminder that some of the things I wanted turned out not to be so great, and some I dreaded opened paths to beauty and possibilities I'd never imagined could be real.

It is a reminder that I’ve never known what happiness looked like before I got there.

So I leap, hands eyes open, screaming and laughing and waving at you as I freefall toward Goddess-knows-what.