What if... joy?

What if we were exactly perfect the way we are? What if we could all just groove on our innate perfection, delight in how much bad TV we watch, laugh at our inconsistent behavior, rejoice in the messes we make.

So much gets caught up in how we want to be seen by others and by ourselves, sometimes we don't savor an aspect of ourselves because our only relationship to it is trying to change it. I'm not against change. Not by a long shot. I see how certain habits of body or mind do not serve me and I work to eliminate/adapt /update/release them.

But what if we allowed for the idea that, along the way – no matter how fat, lazy, broke, dishonest, undisciplined we may be – we never cease to be magnificent. The movie Leaving Las Vegas was a sort of homage to that idea.

I believe that all our actions of body and mind can only serve to reveal the joy of our lives, or veil it. We cannot create joy, anymore than we can destroy it. We can only interfere with our experience of it – and even then, some of the ways we chose to block our own joy are downright beautiful in their absurdity, the way rust on iron can be a beautiful color.

What if .... joy?

Creativity

Today I wish simply to share this quote from Rainer Maria Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet:

In one creative thought a thousand forgotten nights of love come to life again and fill it with majesty and exaltation.

And those who come together in the nights and are entwined in rocking delight (even if they have made a mistake and embrace blindly), perform a solemn task and gather sweetness, depth and strength for the song of some future poet, who will appear in order to say ecstasies that are unsayable.

This to me is the cycle of beauty. Were I to have a religion, this could be its credo. How thrilling to find it expressed so perfectly, over 100 years ago.

Loving Kindness

Dinner with a friend recently spurred the following musing in my mind: what if no matter what do, we embody loving kindness?


Mostly, I’ve thought of the practice of loving kindness as an effort, a mindfulness, a way of regarding and treating people that is different from my normal reactive way. But assuming we are indeed divine creations, can any of our actions not be loving?


I’ve been spared so much by turning away from people who were mean. In a sense, they were guard dogs against danger. Every time I’ve been hurt or angered, I’ve also been spurred to move on to a truer place, impelled to find a job/lover/home/perspective where/with whom I could best become who I want to be, who I believe I was born to be.


I think of the Zen koan, ‘Before enlightenment, chop wood and carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood and carry water.’



What if loving kindness were not so much about altering how we behave or perceive others, and rather accept that there is nothing we can do that does not become fuel for our own or others’ eventual evolution and greater capacity for love and awareness? What if we all are (and all we are is) loving kindness, and our only task is to accept that?


Am I on to something here, or is it just another grease fire in the brain pan?


Does this make sense outside my head? Pray do tell.

... and a chipmunk in a pear tree

From outside my window, something sweet for you as the holiday weekend draws to a close.

Faith on a wing

I found a dragonfly wing this morning. It caught the light just right on my path or I would never have seen it, transparent miracle that it is.

This photo (found online) doesn't show the wing's rainbow irridescence when tilted toward the sun. But it captures exactly the wing's awe-inspiring intricacy.

I am brought to think of a quote from the New Testament Gospels, Matt 6:28-30 28, "And why do you worry about clothes? See how the lilies of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith?"

For those of you who don't know me well, I could not be confused with a Christian, but I have faith -- sometimes large, sometimes little -- and I dip my bucket in many wells.

Sometimes I find a well in texts, scripture and otherwise. Sometimes I find one even deeper, in the impossibly fragile construct of a dragonfly wing.

Where do you dip your bucket?

Let me take you down, cause I'm going to...

...Celery Fields, where everything is quite real.

In this 107-acre nature preserve, a young deer stares me down forty paces away. Watersnakes mate in slithering groups of two or three. Chipmunks and rabbits scurry hither and yon. Tiny bright yellow warblers cavort in the flowering trees and tall reeds among cardinals and red-winged blackbirds. A great blue heron glides along the surface of the central pond, its vast wings never touching the water inches below.

My best spot to meditate happens to be surrounded by lively green poison ivy. Daily I am tempted to bring clandestine clippers and do away with this possible eventual barrier to my sanctuary.

But there is one rule here. No interfering: no killing anything, no feeding anything. Nature, unimpeded, amidst clipped suburban lawns.

Thus, my meditation this morning: what metaphor to me, this poison ivy? Is it poisonous thoughts that plague my mind, of ‘not enough’ , ‘what if’ and ‘what ifn't’. The poisonous leaves do not harm me as long as I don’t touch them. If I don’t fondle the thoughts that inevitably grow where wild things live, where imagination runs wild and free, I can dwell among the ravishing quiet and bird song, where death floats in the water creating a new scuplture of sky, inversing the laws of gravity, as I sit with earth and sky both above and below, as they truly are.

Welcome to the Celery Fields.

p.s. these photos are not mine, as I go there empty-handed. All photos taken at Celery Fields, except Ivy. In order, credits: animals from Phil Lombardi, ivy from Tim McDowell, last Kevin Watson. For more click here.

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.

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.

Courage, I think

A good agent is like a parking spot, or a mate. I only need one.

Now that I am looking again, I remember how much it feels like dating – so much getting ready, so many attractive people at the party, but when rejection comes it only takes a second to pop all the balloons.

So I am writing here as meditation of sorts. I’ve written a story about which I care deeply, and I am simply looking for the best way to share it with as many people as possible, because that is what I do when something touches me. I’ve been known to stop strangers on the street to point out the rising moon, or other heavenly phenomenon, because the beauty was too much for me to carry alone.

I need to remember that this process of seeking agency and publication will result in me being somewhere other than I am right now as I begin, somewhere I cannot predict, whatever the result.

I need to remember that I am not alone. Such friends I have, new and old!

I need to remember that I am being bold! Do you hear me, mighty forces that are said then to come to my aid? I am laying it on the line, officially calling this my best.

I need to remember that feeling this naked and full of want has resulted in some of the greatest beauty I’ve known.

I need you to remind me what else I’ve forgotten. Help!

Onward

The following came to me in light sleep between dreams last night, verbatim. May it speak to you as it did to me:

There are times in life when we are shattered not to pieces but to dust. And even as we fear the wind will come and scatter us, we rise from this dust, not as a phoenix from its ashes, again and again a phoenix, but as something completely new from what we were before, with the added knowledge that we can survive the fire.

The Glory of humility

I’ve been working hard lately, getting things in place to send my book out to agents (more info on that soon). As I contemplate the likely ensuing cycle of anticipation, rejection, interest, disappointment and excitement, I’ve decided to prepare not just my pitch but also my state of mind.

This has led me to consider the practice of humility as a way of staying centered.

Humility brings me to some of my core truths, to wit: my best work comes through when I get out of the way; unwelcome outcomes often become beloved teachers; and I may only ever participate in a situation, never control it.

So then, how to stay humble when my mind swings between delusions of grandeur and fear of dismal failure? What brings me to that centering humility?

I am humbled by the people who love me, because their love reminds me I need not be anyone special; irregular old me is fine, best in fact.

I am humbled by the presence into which I pray.

I am humbled by the syncronicity that brings a friend to whisper in my ear the very words I most needed the very moment I read them, in an email written days before.

I am humbled by the miracle of being alive.

When I enter this space, gratitude follows like bright shadow. When I feel humble, everything feels like a gift.

What brings you a peaceful sense of humility? Does anything? Any suggestions on staying sane at times like these?

Tale of New Biscotti

As a host gift for a New Year’s Eve party, I made biscotti last night, for the first time.

It did not go as planned.

First, the dough seemed wrong to me. Cristi called just then, like a fairy godmother – one who’s studied cooking in Italy no less – and confirmed that the dough was too dry. I added the necessary moisture and was on my way.

Then the bitter skin did not just ‘flake away’ from the roasted hazelnuts, as promised in my tried-and-true recipe book. Refusing to change course, I engaged in the Cinderella-like task of scraping the thin crust from each nut and fragment. After about 45 minutes of this, however, when no new fairy godmother appeared, I decided that half the hazelnuts were good enough for me.

Biscotti means ‘twice cooked.’ After the first baking, after all that trouble, I tasted one and found it really bland, much more so than a biscotti should be. I turned to Paul who suggested a glaze. Using his ideas, another cookbook's (Julia Child), and my own nose, I concocted one out of fake butter (for our dairy-allergic host), brown sugar, cinnamon, orange extract and grated ginger.

Result: strange and wonderful.

Here's what I learned:

• best to trust my multi-colored senses over the black and white recipe.

• my fairy godmother can be counted on, in whatever form she appears, though I must say she often looks like Cristi.

• it’s worth taking the time to avoid planting bitterness, but it’s not a good idea to spend my whole life doing that.

• it's (almost) never too late to ask for help.

Next discovery: how will the biscotti taste dipped in champagne?

L’Chaim!

Look

I had something on my eyelid, it burned a little. I went to look in the mirror. My skin seemed normal, just little red. Then I thought I should compare it to my other eyelid. So I closed that one too.

I really did. Silly me.

I am often reminded of the quote: Blessed are those who can laugh at themselves, for they will never cease to be amused.

Jenny and Colette taught me how to laugh at myself when I was 12 years old and so terribly, terribly serious.

Bless them too.