Use it or Lose It

Everything in your life is there as a vehicle for your transformation. Use it! 

Ram Dass

Thank you, you glorious fellow!  Ram Dass just keeps on keeping on.  He practices the things he talks about, he keeps on teaching with his life as the instrument, his physical obstacles as opportunities for further growth.  His heart is wide open, for his benefit and for ours. You can find his web page here.   I read his first book, Be Here Now while in high school in the mid-seventies.  He is still relevant today, for oldies like me, and young folks alike.  In 2001 he made a  video called Fierce Grace, which I love so much I purchased a copy for myself. I watch it when I need to be reminded of the glory of love and human existence.  

Who inspires and lifts you up?

What You See is What You Get

I think this is due for a re-post.  Originally posted March 2006 on this blog.

If you cultivate a healthy poverty and simplicity, so  that finding a penny will literally make your day, then, since the world is in fact planted with pennies, you have with your poverty bought a lifetime of days.  It's that simple.  What you see is what you get.

Annie Dillard

Do I Have the Courage of my Convictions?

Go to Agitadiaries right now.  You'll be in for an eloquent but bumpy ride.  This post, on the heels of watching Jon Stewart's interview with Douglas Feith, is powerful.

The Way of Life

I can't help but wonder what happens when so many souls leave the planet all at once, so quickly. What happens in the cosmos? The heavens? The collective unconscious? Burma, Oklahoma/Mo, China...gone with the man in the long black coat.

My Place

Once again, one of my favorite Mary Oliver poems speaks to me about present circumstances:

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about your despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting --
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

I am spending time with my dear L., who has always affirmed my basic goodness as a human being. I don't have to walk on my knees for this woman, nor she for me. We are who we are.

She was taken off the steroids and her mental functioning has improved greatly - turns out all the paranoia, mental hyperactivity and visual hallucinations were steriod induced. We've got her back again - for awhile anyway. She was moved to a lovely hospice facility since we lost electrical power during the storm.

I am deeply aware that the world goes on. So is she. She wants the news, she loves having the newspaper read to her. The world is still offering itself to her imagination, and she is willing to still go there and engage. It is a humbling experience to watch the body fail....Puts things into perspective and surely announces our place 'in the family of things.'

The dear woman still has a gleam in her eye when a friend walks through the door.

A Moment

Wow. I had just finished my post yesterday and logged on to Mark’s column. Powerful stuff about fear and the nature of life. His final paragraph grabbed me in my moment of wondering if fearing for my children would ever end:

“Because truth is, you are never far from the suffering and the hell. You are never, ever completely immune, even on your most delightful and mellow post-vacation days. The wolf is always -- and I do mean always -- at the door. It is merely a question of whether or not you wish to simply see him and smell him and give him a moment of respect before moving on, or actually stop, and give in, and offer him the meat from your tired and world-wary bones.”

Like the saying goes, “Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional.”

Thomas Merton put it thusly, “The truth that many people never understand, until it is too late, is that the more you try to avoid suffering the more you suffer because smaller and more insignificant things begin to torture you in proportion to your fear of being hurt.” So Mark must be reading his Merton, or Merton is communicating through him, or gosh, maybe these ideas span time, cultures and spiritual beliefs.

The dichotomy of suffering and happiness has always intrigued me. This duality is central to Buddhism, as I understand it:
How to manage the whole concept of suffering – how to transform it through observation, contemplation, meditation, loving-kindness and right action. It has always been my nature to want to be happy. What Is Happiness and How Do I Get It? This has been the core cognitive process of my life. I turn this one over on a regular basis, working it and smoothing the rough edges. I’ve heard some say we’ve no right to happiness, no right to even expect it. Ah, but I am Oliver Twist, daring to ask for more.

So, like Mr. Morford and everyone else, I go through life and am sometimes put face to face – nose to nose – with the gruesome, the ugly, the violent, the profoundly sad. The trick is to go on…the trick is to, despite the scowling oaf ladling out the porridge, ask for more. Sir.